With excessive hopes of discovering some hidden gems in our hometowns and $100 (£77) in our pockets, we – Natasha Bernal in London and Amanda Hoover in New York – requested the AI to plan the right day.
We determined to make use of Littlefoot, an AI-powered information-seeking chatbot that may generate experiences in 161 cities all over the world. It was created by Bigfoot, a startup based by former Airbnb executives Alex Ward, James Robinson, and Shane Likins, which claims to have entangled the minds of all publicly out there AI-powered chatbots, together with ChatGPT, Claude, Llama, Anthropic, and Perplexity, in addition to 50 info sources like Tripadvisor and Google. Bigfoot claims to make use of three completely different language fashions as “AI brokers” to generate itineraries.
We knowledgeable Littlefoot of our beginning factors, dates and occasions, and included some caveats: Amanda had requested that her New York tour be dog-friendly; Natasha was hell-bent on avoiding London’s crowded vacationer spots.
The outcomes have been, frankly, fairly loopy. Littlefoot now has no idea of time, house, or what is perhaps attention-grabbing to people. Its suggestions vary from the extremely particular (climb a hill in southeast London) to the wildly imprecise (go to London Zoo, with no additional directions). The identical landmarks — just like the London Eye, the Namco Funscape arcade in Romford, a spin studio in Brooklyn — stored popping up in suggestions, to the purpose the place we suspected they is perhaps paid advertisements. (Bigfoot has confirmed that this isn’t the case, and that it has no plans to supply sponsored picks.)
It beneficial health club lessons in London, a live performance and helicopter tour in New York that have been means out of our funds, lunch eating places that solely opened for dinner, and routes that may have us crisscrossing our cities. In London, Bigfoot’s map function confirmed two of its 4 recommended locations in fully the incorrect locations, an issue the corporate says it’s engaged on.
“Whereas we count on to face the standard challenges related to an early-stage firm, we’re assured in our capability to beat them as we purchase extra assets and proceed to refine our strategy based mostly on person suggestions,” says Bigfoot CEO Alex Ward. “We’re a six-person startup, and the routes don’t should be excellent but. However we’re working to do every thing we will to get there within the not-too-distant future.”
Bigfoot says its options, which at the moment rely closely on the situation you specify and the way you phrase what you are in search of, have been examined by 70 to 80 alpha customers this yr, and the corporate is refining the platform based mostly on suggestions.
A Day on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London
I selected a time out to the 560-acre Sports activities Village, which has pedal boats, a observe biking enviornment and tennis courts. I had by no means been there and assumed it might be a variety of enjoyable. It wasn’t.
My day started at 10am in WIRED’s central London workplace. First cease was in East London for a meal at Pizza Union, which didn’t open till 11 and the place Littlefoot claimed slices value £6. (That wasn’t true.) Armed with Google and fellow Londoner and WIRED contributor Sophie Johal, I marched to the tube for the 3-mile experience to Aldgate East, a spot I can safely say nobody goes to voluntarily.