In 2024, there’s no shortage of places to go to learn about new places to visit. There’s plenty of travel writing out there, from detailed travelogues to hyper-specific hotel and airline reviews. Dedicated social media accounts offer a hyper-specific look at making one’s way to a new place and getting the most out of it. Online forums provide another outlet to share information about a destination, and countless YouTubers have made the most of their medium to chronicle their own world travels.
The mediums are very different, but all of these approaches have one thing in common: they were made by people. Or at least, that’s what you’d hope. But a new Washington Post report by Natalie B. Compton explored the growing popularity in some quarters of AI travel influencers — as well as the backlash to them.
At the heart of the Post‘s reporting is Emma, an AI travel influencer created by the German National Tourist Board. “Along the customer journey, Emma can act as an innovative bridge builder between potential travellers and real, unforgettable experiences in Germany as early as the inspiration phase,” said the agency’s CEO, Petra Hedorfer, last month. “Emma will operate in conjunction with our established influencer marketing structures.”
What’s the appeal of going the AI-generated route here? The GNTB explained that Emma could chat with interested travelers in “over 20 languages.” That said, Compton’s reporting at the Post indicated that Emma’s chat feature had some limitations — specifically, as Compton phrased it, that Emma “gets stumped with nuanced topics” such as questions about safety concerns for women traveling alone.
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Inflation is on the minds of manyAs the Post‘s coverage of the launch and its aftermath revealed, not everyone was thrilled to see Emma launched. The concerns raised online covered a lot of ground, from worries over human jobs being lost to AI to arguments over whether it was better to get travel information from, well, actual people. Emma isn’t the only AI travel influencer discussed in the Post‘s reporting, which suggests that — like it or not — we’re going to see that number rise before it drops.
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