While searching the city streets for beautiful images to use in my articles, this particular piece in a souvenir shop inspired me to think about tourism and AI. The picture is mildly entertaining on its surface. It’s a tartan bonnet on a Highland cow and he’s drinking a glass of whisky. It is very Scottish looking. It has about as much thought as any mass produced item in a standard Edinburgh tourist shop. But there is something about it which makes it particularly drab and uninteresting. As a tour guide who does free walking tours, the lack of effort offends me.
(Before we get into inaccuracy. Such as the over wide glencairn glass. The fact he’s wearing a hat with another hat next to him on the table. The label on the bottle blends together letters. Clearly not been through a further editing process.)
It got me to thinking about the act of creation and curation. I began thinking about why people travel.
Today we’re talking about tourism and AI, what the impact might be and how to adapt to it.
What is AI?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to rock almost every sector, if it hasn’t already. But definitions are important so what do we mean by AI in this situation? Primarily, LLM (Large Language Models), which are trained off massive datasets to develop programs which answer questions, respond to prompts and generate images. There are other uses for LLM but these are the ones most pertinent today.
AI works by essentially making predictions based on the data it has. If one word often follows another word then there is a link AI is more likely to use. Since so much of the human experience in the modern world is repetition, AI can effectively perform recurrent tasks well.
It is set to be a disruptive technology because tasks that once required human effort and work can be almost immediately completed. This has the potential to increase the daily productivity of users ludicrously. AI gives everyone a handheld copilot which can communicate ideas in super speed. It can generate promotional material and logos, it can edit photos. It has massive potential to turn expensive tasks into cheap ones.
AI and Tourism
AI can transform the tourism industry as it makes tedious tasks much easier. Complicated email responses can be done in seconds. Marketing strategies can be developed in a single sentence. These articles that I write could be finished with minutes of editing instead of hours of intensive thought, research, sourcing, writing and editing, commingled with decades of experience.
The experience of millions of other written documents could be at my command to create these pieces with less than a paragraph of prompting!
So why don’t I do it?
Tourism as a human industry
In discussion with one of my potentially much brighter friends, she argued that the challenge of AI is figuring out what it is much less good at than people. She used the example of Keith Haring’s unfinished painting which AI completed. Part of the meaning of the piece was lost – the original artist died of AIDs. He knew it would be unfinished. The incompleteness is the whole point. To complete the art would cheapen it, like a bad restoration of a painting. Or a bad Highland Cow.
Certain jobs and tasks still need to be done by humans because otherwise they are not worth it. That’s why we do this in the first place. Nobody gets into tourism because they wanted to tell a program what to tell a customer. Nobody becomes a tour guide to read an AI generated script. And nobody visits a country to receive a regurgitated guide book without any sort of personalisation. We are in this for a genuine love of the guests. The whole notion of travel is experiencing the New and the Different. These cannot come from a repetition machine.
Tourism is a human industry and you cannot hang humanity on a cross of ChatGPT.
A balanced approach to tourism and AI: Our Policy
At Edinburgh Street Historians our position on AI is very simple. AI can be a valuable tool for productivity, but has no part in the content. Ideas can be supplemented by interacting with AI but it is no replacement to real human contact or the writing style of an actual person’s voice. Anything from AI must be sourced to determine truthfulness because it does not know what is true.
We try to use local suppliers and locally based professionals in all we do. If they are using AI to supplement their skills, this is acceptable provided this is not used as a replacement for skill.
We are for sustainability and the local community. This means we interact with everyone in the process. We are humans for a human industry and real travel experiences.
We are against slop cows as we support a tourism industry that is good for all. Whether that be artists, guests, or free tour guides.
The writer of this piece thinks, feels and creates with his entire person.
For more from me, and different consult Bluesky for short form content, Instagram for pictures of food, Facebook for business updates. To book a tour you can find our current offering here.
What challenges do you have with AI?
Oh, and here is probably one of the most entertaining articles on AI I’ve read. It’s always funny to read the view of IT people.
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