Travel businesses “can’t ignore” generative AI models such as ChatGPT, but need to be aware of the limitations, security issues and bias, an expert on technology innovation has warned.
Speaking at Abta’s Travel Convention in Bodrum, Jeremy White – senior innovation editor at tech publication Wired – stressed the “amazing accessibility” and “fantastic democratising effect of these technologies”.
He said: “Small companies will be able to do amazing things. ChatGPT and other models are great for travel guides. They are great for coding, for itineraries and live language translation. You can’t ignore these things.”
But he noted, “it’s not for up-to-date information”, and warned: “You do have security issues.”
If businesses are using these models, White said: “You’re giving your data to open AI. If you’re using customer data this way, you have to make customers aware of that.”
He explained: “The limitation of these models is also important. They don’t understand language. They just appear to. It’s an important distinction. It’s why we get ethical problems.
“There is also a huge bias problem in these models. The biases are going to be a major problem if you’re relying on these technologies.”
White added: “This [generative AI] work needs to be checked. It could be good, but it could have errors.”
If travel companies are using the technology to produce itineraries, White noted: “It will be producing very similar itineraries for your competitors. It’s the human element that brings differentiation.”
He told the Convention: “The history of large language models goes back to the 1980s, but they were very slow and couldn’t handle a sentence.”
The breakthrough came in 2017 when Google developed a transformer – the T in GPT – which could track each word in a sentence, producing “a massive leap to human-like text”.
White said: “It had been coming for a long time. It has just become accessible.”
He noted: “None of the experts agree on whether what is happening will be a good or bad thing. Do you pretend it doesn’t exist or try to use it as a tool. It is there to augment people. If it’s used in that way, it can make your business better.”