Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Expedia wants you to plan your next vacation with ChatGPT

By Christine Romero-Chan April 4, 2023

If it seems like AI is taking over the world, that’s because it certainly feels like it. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has made waves over the past few months, and more and more apps seem to be integrating AI somehow.

Expedia is the latest one, and it wants to use ChatGPT to help you plan your next vacation.

Expedia app using ChatGPT. — Expedia

Expedia has just launched a new plugin for its iOS app today, which is currently in beta. This chatbot tool, which is powered by ChatGPT (of course), lets you start a conversation with everyone’s favorite chatbot. This can give you recommendations on destinations, hotels, transportation, and activities to do on your next vacation trip. You can even take things one step further and have ChatGPT automatically favorite hotels for you that it recommends during your conversation session.

Recommended Videos

This is the latest expansion into ChatGPT tools that Expedia is doing. Recently, it launched a plugin with OpenAI that lets users plan trips out on the ChatGPT site utilizing Expedia’s vast travel data. Today’s announcement takes that tool and integrates it into Expedia’s own mobile app. Whether you’re on ChatGPT or in the Expedia app on your iPhone 14, you can now start a conversation with the chatbot to get travel plans and just get the trip booked.

“We really want to meet our travelers wherever they are,” said Expedia CTO Rathi Murthy of the ChatGPT plugin and the in-app ChatGPT combo.

The ChatGPT integration being offered by Expedia is just the latest now that OpenAI’s API for third-party developers is available, among the release of the latest Large Language Mode (LLM) GPT–4. Expedia rival Kayak also has a ChatGPT plugin, in case you fancy using that instead. Other work apps have also integrated ChatGPT, including Zoom, Slack, Grammarly, Snapchat, OpenTable, and Klarna.

But travel companies like Expedia and Kayak are looking to leverage the conversational nature of ChatGPT’s AI to make booking travel easier and more convenient for people. So, next time you’re planning your family vacation, make sure to hit up everyone’s favorite chatbot for quick recommendations.

Topics

Christine Romero-Chan

Staff Writer, Mobile

Christine Romero-Chan has been writing about technology, specifically Apple, for over a decade. She graduated from California…

Mobile

I found a huge problem with the new ChatGPT iPhone app

ChatGPT app running on an iPhone.

Seemingly out of nowhere, OpenAI released its official ChatGPT iOS app this week. Available for both iPhones and iPads, the free app allows you to use the popular AI chatbot in a much simpler, easier way than ever before. No more messing with the mobile website or trying to fiddle with uncertain third-party apps — just download the official ChatGPT application, and you're good to go.

It's a big step forward to make ChatGPT more accessible and to get it into the hands of more people. Naturally, I was curious to test it out for myself. I've been using the ChatGPT iPhone app to ask the chatbot various questions, and while the whole thing works just like you'd expect, there's one big, glaring problem that makes me never want to touch the app again.
The ChatGPT iPhone app's biggest limitation
ChatGPT (left) vs. Perplexity AI (right) Digital Trends

Mobile

OpenAI’s new ChatGPT app is free for iPhone and iPad

The ChatGPT website on an iPhone.

OpenAI has just launched a free ChatGPT app for iOS, giving iPhone and iPad owners an easy way to take the AI-powered tool for a spin.

The new app, which is able to converse in a remarkably human-like way, is available now in the U.S. App Store and will come to additional countries “in the coming weeks,” OpenAI said. Android users are promised their own ChatGPT app “soon.”

Mobile

Forget ChatGPT — Siri and Google Assistant do these 4 things better

AI assistants compared with ChatGPT.

“Hey Google, Arbab!” I utter these lines to Google Assistant, which automatically takes me to my Twitter DMs with my friend Arbab. That chain of actions happens because I customized one such shortcut for Google Assistant on my phone. Putting the same prompt before ChatGPT, I get the predictably disappointing response: "I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I do not have access to personal contact information such as phone numbers or email addresses.”

That’s just one of the dozen walls that you will run into if you seek to embrace ChatGPT while simultaneously ditching mainstream options like Google Assistant. One wonders why ChatGPT – considered by evangelists as the pinnacle of a consumer-facing AI in 2023 – fails miserably at something as fundamental as sending a message.