Now you can get scammed while planning your trip, thanks to A.I.
The New York Times reports in “A New Frontier for Travel Scammers: A.I.-Generated Guidebooks” that there are now a number of A.I. generated guidebooks for sale online.
Here’s a short description of one buyer’s experience from the article:
“ ‘I was immediately drawn by all the amazing reviews,’ said Ms. Kolsky, 53, referring to what she saw at that time: universal raves and more than 100 five-star ratings. The guide promised itineraries and recommendations from locals. Its price tag — $16.99, compared with $25.49 for Rick Steves’s book on France — also caught Ms. Kolsky’s attention. She quickly ordered a paperback copy, printed by Amazon’s on-demand service.
When it arrived, Ms. Kolsky was disappointed by its vague descriptions, repetitive text and lack of itineraries. “It seemed like the guy just went on the internet, copied a whole bunch of information from Wikipedia and just pasted it in,” she said. She returned it and left a scathing one-star review.”
One of the A.I. “authors” was a “Mike Steves” who was born and raised in Seattle, WA and currently “resides” in Edmunds, WA.
I did a quick Amazon search and couldn’t find any of Mike Steves’ books, so I guess that he’s retired.
But I did find several books that appeared to be A.I. generated along with fake reviews. Reading the article reinforced the value of these travel forums. In addition to Rick Steves’ excellent guidebooks, if you ask on the forums, you will get suggestions for other well written guidebooks that can help you plan according to your interests.
Here’s the link to the article (which does quote the very real Rick Steves)
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/travel/amazon-guidebooks-artificial-intelligence.html