With the explosion of AI, can hotel reviews still be trusted?

Artificial intelligence produces plausible verdicts on hotels, restaurants and tech in an instant

Fake online reviews have long existed and are often not difficult to spot: tortured and mangled English, and excessive praise mixed with blandness to hide the fact the “reviewer” has been nowhere near the actual hotel or restaurant. But AI is turning that upside down – generating fake reviews that are increasingly more difficult to distinguish from those written by the average traveller or restaurant-goer.

Key takeaways

• Tripadvisor acknowledges that AI-generated fake reviews will present new challenges as it tries to weed out the genuine from the fake;
• Although AI tools such as ChatGPT went live only recently, Tripadvisor has seen an impact, removed more than 20,000 reviews this year that it has reason to believe contain AI-generated text, across more than 15,000 properties in 159 countries;
• Google, like Tripadvisor, runs a series of screens to sort out the real from the fake, and has also taken legal action against the most prolific fake reviewers.

Get the full story at The Guardian