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Der Touristik’s Joao Gonzaga, who will be a speaker at this year’s Travel Convention, cites personalised offers, dynamic pricing and sustainability as three areas of the industry that could initially be enhanced by generative AI


‘ChatGPT has tons of applications for travel’


Der Touristik chief warns AI is ‘going to disrupt’ the sector. Ian Taylor reports


Latest developments in generative artificial intelligence (AI) mark “a breakthrough” in technology and promise “tons of applications” in travel, according to Joao Gonzaga, chief digital officer at Kuoni Travel owner Der Touristik Group. He argues the AI-powered


chatbot ChatGPT launched last November “changed the narrative”, telling Travel Weekly: “Generative AI is going to disrupt a lot of industries, including travel.” Gonzaga will speak at Abta’s


Travel Convention in October on 48 31 AUGUST 2023


digital innovation in travel. He said: “People think AI is new, [but] it’s a field of computer science that comes from the 1950s. There was evolution at the end of the 1990s using data to improve decision-making, and further evolution in 2015-17 with the first companies creating neural networks to develop ‘deep learning’. “Generative AI is an evolution


of deep learning. What changed was due to a breakthrough in 2017 by Google. The T in GPT is for the ‘transformer’ model which came from Google moving from


‘supervised learning’ to ‘self-learning’.” He noted: “ChatGPT uses


statistical probabilities to predict text on the simple probability of the next word.” But he insists: “It’s much more


than that. We’re in a breakthrough moment in technology. Even Microsoft and Google got caught by surprise [by ChatGPT]. “Anyone with a computer and


browser has access to this technology. Continued on page 46 travelweekly.co.uk


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