When traveling in Italy, I used ChatGPT as a guide for those times when my mother and I wandered through interesting little corners, alleys and buildings where our curiosity was piqued without a guide around.
Salvador Rodriguez/CNBC
While standing with my mother under the blistering sun in Rome waiting for our Pantheon audio tour to begin, I decided to kill some time with ChatGPT.
“Tell me about the Pantheon in Rome,” I said.
The AI tool returned a lot of information in bulleted formats that were useful, but hardly interesting to read. So I edited my prompt and gave ChatGPT some more information.
“Pretend you’re a tour guide and tell me in a more interesting way,” I wrote.
My mother and I were in the middle of an epic seven-city trip to celebrate her 60th birthday in August. She had no idea I was bringing a digital companion.
“Welcome, chef, to one of Rome’s most special treasures:The Pantheon,” the AI tool replied. (I asked ChatGPT to call me Chef a few months earlier to make the banter more fun.)
“As we stand here before this architectural wonder, I want to take you on a journey back in time, where gods, emperors and artists all intersect in this sacred space,” the chatbot wrote.
Since its launch in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has revolutionized the field of artificial intelligence, boosting the company’s valuation to an eye-watering $157 billion. According to Crunchbase, AI startups have raised $111 billion in funding since the start of 2023, and major tech companies have bought millions in funding. Nvidias processors to train AI models. The generative AI market is predicted to surpass $1 trillion in sales within a decade.
Still, figuring out what to do with ChatGPT can be quite confusing for many regular Internet users.
I use ChatGPT quite a bit. Almost every week I give him a list of five movies I want to see and force him to choose one for me. I recently had a contract drawn up and was asked to summarize long articles.
But my favorite ChatGPT use case so far has been as a travel guide in Italy.
“When you enter, look up,” the chatbot wrote as we began our visit to the Pantheon. “That dome, Chief, is nothing short of a masterpiece. It is the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, and has been that way for almost two thousand years.’
ChatGPT’s 400-word text was definitely on par with the audio tour we purchased, although the headset version did include our entrance tickets.
Elsewhere on our trip, ChatGPT told us that the central figure of the Trevi Fountain was Neptune, riding a chariot drawn by seahorses, and explained why Rome’s Stadio Olimpico still had a monument to Benito Mussolini.
“This particular monument has remained, in part because it is seen as a historical artifact,” the chatbot said.
ChatGPT explained to us why truffles were such a common ingredient in Florence’s cuisine and how Austrian Archduke Maximilian I served as Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia in Milan before later being installed as Emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III.
ChatGPT acted as a guide in Rome, pointing out Michelangelo’s Christ the Redeemer in Rome’s Santa Maria sopra Minerva Church.
Salvador Rodriguez/CNBC
We still need tour guides. For now
If you’re concerned about the future of the human tour guide industry, rest assured that we’ve used many of them across Italy.
In Vatican City, our guide, Amy, did a great job cutting through the huge line to get through security into the Holy City. She showed us the art throughout the Vatican and prepared us to see the Sistine Chapel.
She also did what technology could never do: she created the Sfera con Sfera art structure in the courtyard of the Pinecone in the Vatican. Spinning the enormous bronze sphere is a privilege reserved for the Vatican’s trusted guides.
My mother and I were grateful for the guide who showed us the place where Julius Caesar was cremated in Rome, and for the one who led a boat tour of the five towns of Cinque Terre. Human guides also led 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 countless moments when we wandered into interesting corners, alleys and buildings and were able to satisfy our curiosity by turning to ChatGPT.
Perhaps the best example came when we left the Pantheon and walked across the square into Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The church was free to enter, but we knew very little about it. So I asked ChatGPT.
“Hidden just behind the Pantheon, this is one of the few Gothic churches in Rome, and it is filled with treasures that tell the story of a city where the ancient and the sacred collide,” the chatbot wrote.
Among those treasures was a sculpture at the altar of the church.
“On your left you will find one of the church’s most famous works of art: Michelangelo’s Christ the Redeemer,” ChatGPT said. “This beautiful statue shows Christ holding the cross, with a soft, almost serene expression. It is a powerful work that captures both the humanity and divinity of Christ, and it is remarkable to think that it was sculpted by the same hands that have created the Sistine Chapel.”
A week later, my mother and I would have to fight other tourists to get a nice photo of Michelangelo’s David in Florence. But in the church in Rome we stood alone, with our friendly chatbot, near a historic statue made by the same artist.
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