This was published 1 year ago
Here's what happens when an AI tries to write a travel guide
Great travel writing captures moments that have never happened before, and will never happen again. Credit: iStock
If you make your living writing things, putting words together in ways that are pleasing and informative to other people, there are only two ways to feel about the rise of AI-driven chatbots like ChatGPT: absolute ignorance, or absolute panic.
Because you either don't know that ChatGPT exists and are therefore wandering the world thinking you'll still have a job in two years; or you do, and you understand that a bot is coming for your livelihood, and it is coming for it fast.
ChatGPT can write all sorts of things, from resumes to academic texts to poetry, and, most concerningly for your current scribe, it can also write travel stories. In fact, it's already writing travel stories, travel stories you may even have read on popular publications.
An article last week in the online magazine Futurism lifted the lid on the practice at Buzzfeed, revealing more than 40 travel guides on the massive site that had been written by ChatGPT, or a similar AI chatbot.
I was alerted to this story by the travel-writing community on Twitter, who were laughing at the awfulness of the AI travel guides – almost every article on Buzzfeed described its focus destination as a "hidden gem". Prague is a hidden gem. California is a hidden gem. Bruges is a "secret gem". Ecuador is an "absolute gem".
That seemed to make everyone else feel more comfortable, but I felt the opposite. I mean, god, it's rumbled us. Do you know how many actual, human-written travel stories talk about hidden gems? If AI catches onto "iconic" and "wow factor" we'll be out of a job tomorrow.
I'd been thinking about this a lot already, for obvious reasons. Could AI write a good travel story? Could a computer program spit out a Traveller cover feature? Could the work of traversing the globe and capturing our experiences for the enjoyment of others be supplanted by an algorithm?
Despite the accuracy of describing everything as a hidden gem, I'm still going to say no. Not because I have to believe that, but because I genuinely do. And anyone who loves to travel, whether they write about it or not, would understand why.
Because travel isn't about data. It's not pure information that can be scoured from the internet. It's not ones and zeroes that can be copied and repurposed.
Travel is heart. It's emotion. It's a series of unique experiences that could not be described by any being, sentient or not, that hadn't been there and seen it for themselves.
Great travel writing, and great travel, is the experience of moments that have never happened before, and will never happen again. It's chance encounters with strangers. Tiny decisions that change the course of your life. That first mouthful of food, that first glimpse of a view, that first breath of air.
You could feed all of the information you liked into a computer program, it could read every travel story that has ever been written, it could understand the propensity to say things like "hidden gem", and yet a chatbot could still never capture the actual experience of going somewhere and seeing something and feeling all of the emotions that that fires in you.
Remember back during pandemic lockdowns, when travel companies were scrambling, and they started offering "virtual travel" experiences? There were all these ways to travel while you couldn't actually travel, to use virtual-reality or even just standard computer screens to take you out of your locked-down life and into another place.
And they were great – for a while. For maybe a month or two. But pretty soon most people realised that that just wasn't going to cut it, that you can't even go close to replicating the greatness of the travel experience via a screen. Virtual travel is no travel all, not when you miss all of the human interactions, all of the tactile experiences, all of the sensual brilliance of being in a place that's foreign and fascinating.
To me, the travel-writing chatbots have the same problem. Yes, they can manage some tasks so well that you probably won't even realise they're there. They can do basic guides, the type that feed you information on opening hours and location and even popularity.
They can cobble together basic descriptions of destinations, the type you might read in a guidebook, static summaries of what a place is like and why people might enjoy going there as a tourist.
But they can't tell you the story of travel. They miss the human variations.
Every single person sees and experiences a destination in a totally different way. Grab 10 people who have been for a holiday in Barcelona and they will tell you 10 completely different stories of the city, give you 10 pieces of entirely different advice, give you 10 wildly disparate opinions on the people and the food and the places they stayed.
Travel writers all see the world in their own way too – something different piques their interest, something amazing happens on their journey.
That experience isn't always well conveyed. Hidden gems are uncovered. Wow factor is noticed. Suddenly everything is iconic.
But true travel, the raw experience, the excitement and the beauty and the synapse-tingling unpredictability of it all, can never be faked by a computer.
Or at least, not yet.
Email: b.groundwater@traveller.com.au
Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater
Twitter: twitter.com/bengroundwater
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