While traveling in Italy, I used ChatGPT as a tour guide in moments when my mom and I wandered through curious and interesting little corners, alleys, and buildings without a tour guide.
Salvador Rodriguez/CNBC
As my mom and I waited under the scorching Roman sun for the Pantheon audio tour to begin, I decided to kill time with ChatGPT.
“Tell me about the Roman Pantheon,” I said.
The AI tool returned a lot of useful information in bullet points, but it didn’t make for interesting reading. So we adjusted the prompt to provide ChatGPT with a little more information.
“Pretend to be a tour guide and tell me it in a more interesting way,” I wrote.
My mom and I were in the middle of an epic seven-city trip in August to celebrate her 60th birthday. She didn’t know I was bringing a digital companion with me.
“Welcome, Chef, to one of Rome’s most extraordinary treasures…pantheon” the AI tool responded (I asked ChatGPT to call me Chef a few months ago to make the joke even funnier).
“As we stand before this architectural marvel, let us take you on a journey back in time, where gods, emperors, and artists all intersected in this sacred space,” the chatbot wrote. Ta.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT has revolutionized the field of artificial intelligence since its launch in November 2022, increasing the company’s valuation to an eye-popping $157 billion in the process. According to Crunchbase, AI startups have raised $111 billion in funding since the beginning of 2023, and big tech companies have made millions in acquisitions. Nvidia’s A processor for training AI models. The generative AI market is predicted to: over $1 trillion It will be profitable within 10 years.
However, for many everyday Internet users, figuring out what to do with ChatGPT can be quite difficult.
I use ChatGPT a lot. Almost every week, I give him a list of five movies he wants to see and force him to choose one. I recently had a contract drawn up and I asked them to summarize a long article.
But my favorite use case for ChatGPT so far is as a tour guide in Italy.
When we started our visit to the Pantheon, the chatbot wrote, “Please look up when you enter.” “Chef, that dome is nothing short of a masterpiece. It’s the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world and has been that way for almost 2000 years.”
ChatGPT’s 400-word text was exactly on par with the audio tour we purchased. However, the headset version included an admission ticket.
Elsewhere on our trip, ChatGPT tells us that the central figure in the Trevi Fountain is Neptune in a chariot drawn by seahorses, and that Rome’s Stadio Olimpico still maintains a monument to Benito Mussolini. He explained why he was there.
“This special monument has been left in place, in part because it is considered a historical relic,” the chatbot said.
ChatGPT explains why truffles are such a common ingredient in Florentine cuisine and how Archduke Maximilian I of Austria served as Viceroy of Lombardy and Venice in Milan before being later appointed Emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III. He explained the process.
ChatGPT, who works as a tour guide in Rome, pointed out Michelangelo’s Christ the Redeemer in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.
Salvador Rodriguez/CNBC
We still need a tour guide. for now
If you are worried about the future of the human tour guide industry, rest assured that we use a large number of tour guides throughout Italy.
In Vatican City, our tour guide Amy cut through the huge lines to get through security and into the holy city. She showed us art throughout the Vatican and prepared us to see the Sistine Chapel.
She also did something that technology could never do. She created the Sfera con Sfera, an art structure in the Vatican’s pine-cone courtyard. Spinning the giant bronze sphere is a privilege granted to the Vatican’s trusted tour guides.
My mom and I were grateful to our guide for showing us where Julius Caesar was cremated in Rome and for taking us on a boat tour of five towns in the Cinque Terre. Human guides also took us through vineyards in Tuscany, a hidden courtyard in Venice where the climactic scene of “Casino Royale” was filmed, and George Clooney’s villa on Lake Como.
But there were many moments when I wandered into interesting little nooks, alleys, and buildings and was able to satisfy my curiosity by turning to ChatGPT.
Perhaps the best example of this was when we left the Pantheon and walked across the square towards Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Admission to the church was free, but we knew little about the church. So we asked ChatGPT.
“Tucked away just behind the Pantheon, this church is one of the few Gothic churches in Rome and is full of treasures that tell the story of this city where the ancient and the sacred meet,” the chatbot wrote. .
Among these treasures was a sculpture that was located near the church’s altar.
“To the left will be one of the church’s most famous works of art, Michelangelo’s Christ the Redeemer,” ChatGPT said. “This stunning statue shows Christ holding up the cross with a gentle, almost serene look on his face. It is a powerful work that captures both Christ’s humanity and divinity, and is the inspiration for the creation of the Sistine Chapel. It’s amazing to think that they were carved by the same hand.” ”
A week later, my mom and I had to fight off other tourists in Florence just to get a pretty photo of Michelangelo’s David. But in a church in Rome, we were alone with a friendly chatbot in front of a historic statue created by the same artist.
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