Kayak has launched new AI features that let you ask chatbots for travel tips and search for flights with just a screenshot. This puts Kayak on par with many other travel sites that offer AI services for travel planning and now price comparisons.
PriceCheck, one of Kayak's two new AI features, allows users to see if they've found the best price by simply taking a screenshot of flight information they find elsewhere. Kayak said in a statement that customers can upload a screenshot of their flight even if they found it on a competitor's website, and that PriceCheck has sent “hundreds of emails to see if we can find a better price. “Search the website.”
Matthias Keller, Kayak's chief scientist and senior vice president of technology, said in an email: The Verge The service uses AI to extract information such as schedules and airlines from screenshots and uses customer parameters to search the internet for cheaper flights.
“It's used to present content that's more relevant to the user and more appealing alternatives,” Keller said. “This is also a way to attract new users, including those who are loyal to a particular airline or program, because even within this preferred provider, Kayak Pricecheck may find better prices. .”
This type of AI is called computer vision, and the model can scan photos and PDFs and extract information such as important terms and objects. Google, Microsoft, and Apple have been using computer vision for years to identify and tag faces in photos and search for terms in poorly scanned PDFs.
Kayak also wants to make it easy for customers to get answers to their travel-related questions. Travelers can ask Ask Kayak, a Kayak chatbot, if they have questions about their travel plans or want to narrow down where to stay and what to do. For example, a user can ask a chatbot a question such as “What is the cheapest destination to fly to this weekend?” or “Can he tell me a hotel in New York City that costs less than $300 a night?”
Ask Kayak is currently available to users in the US, UK, and Canada, with plans to expand to other regions soon. The company used his ChatGPT to build Ask Kayak.
Since generative AI services became popular, travel planning was one of the first use cases that generative AI services were expected to disrupt. Kayak isn't the only travel website exploring how generative AI can improve how customers search for flights and hotels.Expedia reported The Verge The company hopes to use more AI features to help more people start planning their trips on the site instead of on Google.