Imagine paying good money to see a gorgeous geographic marvel in the mountains of Peru, only to get there and find it was an AI hallucination, leaving you stuck in the middle of nowhere at 13,000 feet with no beautiful vista, no oxygen, and no cellphone signal.
According to the BBC, that's exactly what one couple was on their way to do if not for local guide Miguel Angel Gongora Meza, who overheard their enthusiastic plans of hiking into the Andes unaccompanied to see the fabled "Sacred Canyon of Humantay."
‘They [showed] me the screenshot, confidently written and full of vivid adjectives, [but] it was not true. There is no Sacred Canyon of Humantay!' said Gongora Meza. ‘The name is a combination of two places that have no relation to the description. The tourist paid nearly $160 in order to get to a rural road in the environs of Mollepata without a guide or [a destination].
‘This sort of misinformation is perilous in Peru.'
They're not alone.
According to one survey, 30% of travelers use AI tools and AI travel sites to plan their trips.
But it's not just fake places that are a problem when using AI to plan trips and excursions.
Dana Yao and her husband recently used ChatGPT to plan a sunset viewing trip on Mount Misen.
They set off at 15:00 to hike to the montain's summit in time for sunset, exactly as ChatGPT had instructed them.
‘That's when the problem showed up,' said Yao, a creator who runs a blog about traveling in Japan, ‘[when] we were ready to descend [the mountain via] the ropeway station. ChatGPT said the last ropeway down was at 17:30, but in reality, the ropeway had already closed. So, we were stuck at the mountain top.'
Another couple went to see this scenic cable-car attraction in Malaysia, only to find the place was made by AI. Neither the location or the cable cars are real.
(You can tell if you watch closely as the cars change colors and sometimes go sideways.)
The couple tried to sue the journalist in the video for misleading them, only to learn that she too was completely AI generated.
If you're going to use AI in your travel plans, just remember the old Russian phrase Ronald Reagan was so fond of using:
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