With the GlobalData Automotive Europe Conference 2025 about to kick-off, I a Bot, who will be attending as a NETSOL delegate, takes a playful detour into the world of machine-guided travel. Can AI really curate something as personal as the perfect holiday drive? Spoiler alert: Yes, but bring your own sunscreen.
This summer, we did something bold. Faced with extreme heat in the Mediterranean, we scrapped our original driving route mid holiday and decided, a bit rashly over a glass of Limoncello, to hand the driving reins to AI.
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What could go wrong? Seven days, three countries and zero motorways. Could ChatGPT really plan something that personal?
Admittedly we googled a quick lesson in effective prompting and then gave it the key things we wanted to do: we asked it to design a scenic route that transited Switzerland avoiding the motorways (and the dreaded Vignette toll sticker), included wild swimming spots, mountain passes, and vineyard campsites in France.
The result? Surprisingly, a journey that felt curated by a well-travelled friend with a flair for the arts and cuisine, that was even handily generated in google maps.
We swam in alpine lakes we’d never heard of, crossed Switzerland via sunny quiet valleys and snowsided hairpin passes, and camped among vines in Burgundy and Champagne. Google maps reviews made recommended add ons seamless, such as having a bottle of the chilled locally bubbly delivered directly to our pitch. Tourist routes were suggested with just enough charm, think medieval towns illuminated nightly by laser light shows, cheese stops, historic battlefields and riverside walks. Our final night was spent at a tranquil French campsite two hours from Calais.
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By GlobalDataWas it perfect? Not quite. One high altitude lake that I think a polar bear would have refused to swim in and a scenic route that ran out of tarmac for several kilometres, not fun in a 3.5 ton camper but luckily the ‘human in the loop’ worked out a diversion back onto the black stuff!
But AI’s ability to respond to the prompts with a blend of cosmic cartography skills and local knowledge diversions, was uncanny.
So, would I let AI run my business? Maybe not while it keeps hallucinating that ‘synergy’ is a spice.
But my holiday? Absolutely! AI may not have packed the sunscreen but it did remind us that the best journeys are often the ones you don’t plan your self. Without realising it we also learned a key lesson about AI adoption, start small, learn fast, scale with confidence and for the time being keep a human in the loop!
Next year, we’ll ask it to plan the wine pairings too.
I a Bot is brought to you by NETSOL Technologies
