Google Bard's Travel Planning Capability Is Same as ChatGPT's — Unimpressive

25.08.2023 - 13:53 / skift.com / Justin Dawes / Generative Ai

Google released limited access to Bard, essentially its own version of ChatGPT, earlier this week. If today were six months ago, it would be more exciting. But compared to what is available today, the chatbot’s abilities are not particularly impressive. 

I joined the Bard waitlist and was granted access shortly after, so I tried it out. 

Like the basic ChatGPT product, Bard only provides general answers. When prompting the chatbot for a travel itinerary, for example, it gives general ideas of what to do with some references to real places. It is unable to provide details like events or current hotel rates, the same shortcoming as ChatGPT. 

When prompted for a three-day trip to London focused on modern art and Indian food, it gave three variations of suggestions for some of the most popular museums and restaurants. That could be helpful to someone early in the planning process who has never been to London, but that’s basically the extent of the capabilities at the moment. 

The itineraries tend to include a version of this completely unhelpful disclaimer: 

“This itinerary can be customized to fit your interests and budget. For example, if you are interested in art, you could spend more time visiting museums and galleries. If you are interested in food, you could visit more restaurants and try different cuisines. And if you are on a tight budget, you could eat at more affordable restaurants or cook your own meals.”

The chatbot also attempts to give some travel pointers. Some are helpful, and some are obvious: 

The user can click a “Google it” button at the bottom of the Bard screen. All that does is perform a traditional Google search with a simplified version of the prompt originally submitted to Bard — not a helpful feature at the moment. 

Bard has also shown that it doesn’t have the same creative chops as ChatGPT. 

Google makes no claim that this is a final product — it states clearly in multiple places that Bard is an experiment. The company is in the stage of gathering user feedback to strengthen the product. 

Though it is tempting to compare Bard with the new version of Bing, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison right now because Google has not updated its search engine with the generative AI tech yet. Google said that is coming in the future. 

Microsoft has been able to overlay its own platform and data on top of ChatGPT’s underlying tech to create a more useful end product — the new version of Bing. It is the best version of what’s available so far to consumers, and it gives users the best taste of what’s to come with travel planning and booking. The platform includes links to accompany its results, and although they’re often not helpful, that’s the right direction. 

While the Bing chatbot