A small series on AI research prompts to find things which would otherwise take quite a few hours to do manually, and my experiences with it. Let's start with a real world example.

The trigger

Since subscribing to a cooking box I have regularly been standing in the kitchen preparing meals. It prompted me to fill my kitchen with loads and loads of kitchenware over the years: New frying pans, new pots, new cutlery, new sieves, kitchen aids I never knew I needed, to the point where the space to store it all is becoming more valuable than dug up gold. Oh, and music. Cooking while listening to music is a ritual by now. There is a sort of half-wall between the kitchen and the hallway with space to put a few things on top, maybe 10 cm or so – good spot for a musicbox. This is where the music comes from whenever I am cooking: An Anker Soundcore 2. This is plugged into a little port replicator of sort via 3.5mm AUX for audio and USB for power. The port replicator is then plugged into the phone doing the playback and connected to ethernet since my phone supports it and the router is, like, 50 cm away. It is also plugged into the USB port of the same router for power. Here, I've drawn a schematic drawing with diagrams.net: Now, this introduces a clear mental separation: If I am doing all this plugging, I'm starting the process of cooking, like a point in an agenda. When I unplug my phone, that point is finished. There is no casual "let's listen to music while brewing tea" since the act of brewing is more or less quickly done, like 5 minutes maybe. Wearing out the USB connector on the phone every time I'm doing benign things in the kitchen – there must be a better way. And there is: Ever heard of Sonos?

The road to more comfort

Sonos speakers are comparable to iPhones: A well-known thing from your everyday life, with a hefty price tag. I mean, a speaker you connect your phone to to play music is an ubiquitous concept. You don't need a Sonos for this. There's Bluetooth, after all, and speaker models far too many to count using it. But Bluetooth has a big downside: Quality. Your music may be 24-bit 96000 Hz lossless FLAC files for that True Audiophile Experience™ (I know, Spotify Lossless is just 24-bit 48000 Hz), the only mandatory codec support for every Bluetooth device supporting the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) is still only the Low-Complexity Sub-Band Codec, or SBC, so of course all those Chinese boxes will implement, well, this, and no more. Chances are, even if your speaker does support other codecs, your phone might not support them, or other factors don't allow its use, forcing audio into some 48000 Hz 512 kbit/s (and that's max; usually it's the standard 44100 Hz with maybe 256 kbit/s) lossy excuse of music playback. Wired, music starts to sound remotely like it's supposed to sound. So I will be sticking to this.

Paired with the previous point of eliminating the clear separation plus wired playback led me to the need of finding a music playback box incorporating this plus a few other criteria for maximum comfort. Playback must be possible without the plugging ritual. Usually, I am firing up some search engines for this and start something of a comparison in QOwnNotes or Kate, doing research on must-have features, nice gimmicks and, of course, price. So I must identify viable products, check their features, check availability, check prices, look for discounts, check the second hand market. But doesn't this sound like something I can ask an AI? Yes. Yes, it is. Probably. Maybe. I would've spent hours on research, but now I'm going to spend a few minutes crafting a prompt instead and let an AI do that.

The prompt

So, utilizing my Kagi Ultimate subscription giving me access to the Kagi Research agent, one that iteratively plans searches, analyzes the results, plans more searches and in the end plans a thorough, educated answer (read about it on Kagi), I was asking the Research agent this in German:

I am looking for a musicbox with the following properties: Ethernet (using adapters is okay, but explicitly specify this with price), Spotify Connect, Spotify Lossless, with integrated speakers. Controls on the device and screen optional. Bluetooth and AUX connectors optional. Original prices up to 300€.

After about 45 seconds I was presented the following planned response. It is apparent that my requirements were at least detected.

Response planned

I have searched extensively for music boxes with the wanted properties. The research resulted in multiple interesting candidates, where price and Ethernet support were the main criteria. Especially important was the confirmation that Spotify Connect is supported and an Ethernet port is available.

• Main recommendations under 300€ with all requirements
• Detailed analysis of the top candidates with prices
• Ethernet adapter option for devices without a native LAN port
• Additional information on Spotify Lossless support
• Conclusion with clear purchase recommendation

The response

The answer confirmed Kagi's stance that LLMs are bullshitters, but they can be useful (emphasis on can here). You will be led astray if you don't check the sources of these answers, big time. In the case of this research request, the LLM was both bullshitting and useless.

The following three products were recommended:

1. Teufel Radio 3Sixty - 229,99€ (price performance tip)

✅ Ethernet: Native LAN port
✅ Spotify Connect: Completely supported
✅ Spotify Lossless: Support via Spotify Connect
✅ Integrated speakers: 360° sound with 3 drivers
✅ Controls on device: Yes, plus Teufel Remote app
✅ Screen: Yes
✅ Bluetooth: Yes
❌ AUX connector: Not explicitly mentioned.

2. Bluesound Pulse Flex 2i - from 299,00€ (audiophile choice)

✅ Ethernet: LAN port available
✅ Spotify Connect: Supported completely
✅ Spotify Lossless: Explicitly "ready for Spotify lossless"
✅ Integrated speakers: Hi-Res Audio, 25W total
✅ Controls on device: Yes, plus BluOS app
❌ Screen: No
✅ Bluetooth: Yes
❌ AUX connector: Not mentioned

3. Hama DIR3100MS - Price unknown

✅ Ethernet: WLAN/LAN supported
✅ Spotify Connect: Yes (Premium account necessary)
❓ Spotify Lossless: Unconfirmed
✅ Integrated speakers: Yes
✅ Controls on device: Yes, plus remote
✅ Screen: 2,8" color display
❌ Bluetooth: Not mentioned
✅ AUX connector: Not explicitly mentioned

Let's break it down a bit.

• ❌ Ethernet: Only HAMA has an explicitly mentioned Ethernet port, confirmed by manual. The price is unknown because the agent's source was Amazon where this device is no longer sold, meaning it's an older model. Teufel's Ethernet port is mentioned because of a support page. The AI then went on hallucinating: Because that support page is there, it assumed that all Teufel products have an Ethernet port, leading to a violation of my requirement in the very first metric. But that same page states that only Streaming series of speakers have one – and the 3Sixty is a Raumfeld-series speaker.
• ✅ Spotify Connect: Mentioned in all products, so this probably was correct.
• ❌ Spotify Lossless: None support it. In the case of Teufel, the agent referred to a support page about it as the source, but on the very same page, Teufel explicitly states that devices in the Streaming/Raumfeld series (again, 3Sixty is a Raumfeld one) don't support it.
• ✅ Integrated speakers: All correct.
• ✅ Controls: All correct.
• ✅ Screen: All correct.
• ✅ Bluetooth: All correct.
• ❌ AUX: All wrong, all devices have got a 3.5mm Line-In plug.

This makes an error rate of 37.5%. Make it maybe 35% because HAMA did have an Ethernet port in the end.

The conclusion

In the end, that prompt with the subsequent background prompts and searches had a cost of $0.53 for nothing because I didn't buy any of those. I then relaxed the requirements a bit, cutting out the Ethernet port because it's really quite rare these days, and found a device on the second hand market which, on first glance, had Spotify Lossless support, for 200€. Which was not the case in the end because the official documentation falsely mentioned that model as supported (contacted tech support for this). Ugh. Well, for now, I will keep using this one. But I'm still two requirements short.

As for the AI, apparently it can refer to documentation pages without reading (analyzing) the content of those documentation pages. I mean, quote that something is there while the page is not quoting it? Quite the feat. Almost like your quintessential human. :)

Also classifying Bluesound with one little speaker as the "audiophile choice" while the Teufel device features 360° sound with three drivers – I think the AI matched "Hi-Res audio" and hallucinated about its meaning, likely because "High-Res" is often found in the vicinity of typical audiophile speech.

Huh? Use ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Llama directly!

Actually, I did (through Kagi you gain access to a very good number of those). I got results in less than 10 seconds, sure, but those were even less helpful. Like, for example, the frequent recommendation of devices without integrated speakers, like the Inklang HD 10 Stream Connect which is not even a music box but an amplifier. For 749€. Staggeringly unhelpful.

Maybe the prompts were crap? Crap in, crap out, as the principle goes. Let me know in the comments – it's free, after all. Anyway, I am going to use AIs for those kinds of product research and report about their results from time to time, but it looks like for now it's really only useful for playing around.