Conversation around artificial intelligence in the hotel industry has heated up more in the last six months than ever before. The CoStar News Hotels team had great conversations at the Hotel Data Conference in particular with hoteliers actually putting AI to use, rather than just talking about it.
We’ve run countless opinion pieces and news stories about data-analysis trends and tips, how to use AI to assist digital marketing and customer identification strategies, all of it. It’s useful, it’s great, there are so many ways this technology will transform our lives, not just our industry.
My team and I learn more and more every day from hoteliers and tech experts in the field who put these tools together and use them.
But today I want to give you a tiny word of caution from my perspective as a journalist. Consider this some gentle advice from your friend who crafts content for a living.
I’ll cut to the point: Don’t use it to write real content that you care about.
Every day, countless press releases, social media posts, contributed columns and general emails cross my desk in the name of content. Everyone wants to sound pithy and spur action, teach their peers, compel action and explain things in amazing, thought-provoking ways.
And it’s frighteningly obvious how much of this content is AI-generated.
Yes, we can spot it a mile away, and it's not good.
So many of you will say, “Who cares? I’ve got a real job to do that doesn’t involve writing or content. So what if I get a little help?”
A little help is good. Total content takeover is not good.
AI-generated news releases are annoying, but honestly — most emails and news releases aren’t written in ways that compel me to learn more right off the bat.
What’s really damaging though is when people put out content that is associated directly with their names that has clearly been written entirely by AI. Examples include social media posts, bylined column contributions and professional emails that you’re trying to pass off as having a personal touch.
They all read fake right away. Why? Because they’re perfect. Too perfect.
Informally, I've played with it to see how it might write a news story or a headline. Sentences are structured perfectly. Word choice is perfectly varied, punctuation is better than I can do, that's for sure.
And every single time, that experiment results in a story that lacks perspective, point of view and what I call "the vibe of the room where it happened."
Its surface-level perfection renders the story useless to its readers.
Always question perfection. Perfection has no soul, and no real person can relate to it.
It is, in a word, inauthentic.
Generative AI is and will be The Big Conversation for a long time, as we all weigh ethics and use cases and legitimacy and fact-checking and sourcing and all of it.
Where it will steal your soul is when you let it act as your voice. Don't do it.
For the record because it has to be said: The CoStar News Hotels team does not use AI to generate our news content, headlines, social posts or anything. I wrote this blog all by myself and I'd love to hear what you think of it: Email me or find me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.