We Asked AI to Take Us On a Tour of Our Cities. It Was Chaos

With precocious hopes of uncovering immoderate hidden gems successful our location cities and $100 (£77) each burning a spread successful our pockets, we—Natasha Bernal successful London and Amanda Hoover successful New York—asked AI to program retired the cleanable day.

We decided to usage Littlefoot, an AI-powered section find chatbot that tin make experiences successful 161 cities astir the world. It was created by Bigfoot, a startup founded by erstwhile Airbnb executives Alex Ward, James Robinson, and Shane Lykins that purports to enmesh the minds of each the publically disposable AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Claude, Llama, Anthropic, and Perplexity, successful summation to 50 accusation sources specified arsenic Tripadvisor and Google. Bigfoot claims to usage 3 antithetic connection models arsenic “AI agents” to make itineraries.

We told Littlefoot our respective starting points, dates, and times, and introduced immoderate caveats: Amanda asked that her New York circuit beryllium dog-friendly; Natasha was obsessed with avoiding London’s crowded tourer hotspots.

The results were, frankly, alternatively mad. Right now, Littlefoot has nary conception of clip oregon abstraction oregon what a quality being mightiness find interesting. Its recommendations alteration wildly from the incredibly niche (climbing up a elevation successful South East London) to the wildly vague (going to the London Zoo, nary further acquisition provided). The aforesaid attractions—such arsenic the London Eye, the Namco Funscape arcade successful Romford, a cycling workplace successful Brooklyn—kept coming up successful recommendations, to the constituent that we suspected it mightiness beryllium paid-for advertising. (Bigfoot has confirmed that is not the lawsuit and that it has nary plans to connection sponsored picks.)

It recommended back-to-back gym sessions successful London, a performance and chopper circuit successful New York that were retired of our budget, restaurants for luncheon that didn’t unfastened until meal time, and itineraries that would person sent america criss-crossing astir our respective cities. In London, Bigfoot’s representation relation showed 2 retired of the 4 suggested destinations successful wholly incorrect locations, an contented that the institution says it is moving on.

“While we expect to look emblematic challenges associated with an aboriginal company, we are assured successful our quality to conscionable them arsenic we get much resources and proceed to refine our attack based connected idiosyncratic feedback,” says Bigfoot CEO Alex Ward. “We’re a preseed startup of six, and itineraries aren’t meant to beryllium cleanable conscionable yet. But we are moving to bash everything we tin to get determination successful the not-too-distant future.”

Bigfoot says its features—which are presently precise contingent connected the determination you supply and however you operation what you’re looking for—have been tested by 70 to 80 alpha users this year, and the institution is refining the level based connected feedback.

A Day Around London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

I picked a time centered astir the 560-acre sporting village, which features pedal boats, a way cycling arena, and tennis courts. I had ne'er been earlier and assumed it would beryllium large fun. It wasn’t.

My time started astatine 10 americium astatine WIRED’s bureau successful Central London. The archetypal halt was successful East London, to devour astatine a spot called Pizza Union, which didn’t unfastened until 11 and which Littlefoot claimed had slices priced £6. (It was wrong.) Armed with Google and a comrade, chap Londoner and WIRED staffer Sophie Johal, I marched to the underground for a 3-mile travel to Aldgate East, a spot I tin confidently accidental nary 1 goes to voluntarily.