Meet the family letting an AI chatbot plan a 6-month trip around the world with their one-year-old daughter
- Travel influencer Michael Motamedi is letting AI plan his family's six-month trip around the world.
- GuideGeek, an AI travel assistant, will decide which countries they visit. First stop: Morocco.
Travel influencers Michael Motamedi and Vanessa Salas typically spend days, if not weeks, researching travel plans for them and their 18-month-old daughter.
But on Wednesday, the family used an AI chatbot to decide on their next destination in under an hour: They were heading to Morocco.
For the next six months, the digital nomad family is relinquishing control of their itinerary to artificial intelligence — an experiment that will be the basis of a new web series called "No Fixed Address."
"I cannot explain to you the nerves that I have going into this," Motamedi said in an interview with Insider. "It's nerve-racking when you're not making the decisions. It's kind of a strange, out-of-body experience."
Motamedi is partnering with GuideGeek, a free AI travel assistant owned by the Matador Network that uses ChatGPT technology, to produce the show. The newly released chatbot will plan nearly every step of the family's journey, from picking out different cities for them visit to deciding where to eat each day. GuideGeek declined to disclose the financial terms of the partnership.
After living in a new country for a month, Motamedi will ask GuideGeek where they should travel to next based on their general interests, such as nice beaches, interesting architecture, and good food. The family will handle real-time logistics like booking flights and finding living accommodations, he said.
"We're going to pick the next place when we're in Morocco," he told Insider. "That's the crazy part about this whole journey — I don't know where I'm going to end up in July."
Motamedi and Salas tested the technology out in April while using the chatbot to plan a date night in Mexico City. GuideGeek provided speakeasy and drink recommendations as well as local history facts.
While its recommendations resulted in a "fantastic night," Motamedi insists the new technology should be used as a helpful tool rather than a substitution for human interaction or online videos or articles based on personal experiences.
"Will I utilize AI as a tool? Of course," he said. "Do I care if the AI had a good time having tea? Not really because it doesn't know how to taste tea."
Despite his confidence in the nascent technology, Motamedi said he (and his mother) are "terrified" to let a robot plan out his family's life for the next six months.
Artificial intelligence chatbots based on large language models like ChatGPT are known to "hallucinate," or make up false information — which can have real-life impacts when relying on the bots to make important travel decisions. Motamedi experienced this first-hand when he asked GuideGeek to provide the history of pastry shops in Mexico City, which he realized was inaccurate after talking to a local business owner.
Knowing the chatbot is bound to make mistakes, Motamedi said he does not plan on following its advice blindly and will occasionally fact-check its results.
"My family comes first," he said. "Just because Google Maps is telling me to go left and I see a lake in front of me, doesn't mean I'm gonna go into that lake."