This newsletter was written by AI
No humans over-exerted themselves in the making of this newsletter.
In the spirit of embracing AI, we’ve put Chat GPT to the test. We fed it data from our recent travel writing in AI survey and here’s what the bot spat out. Scroll to the end to see the prompt we used for this actually quite interesting article. Don’t worry, next week we’ll be back to our usual human-crafted programming.
How Travel Writers Are Really Using AI in 2025
If you’ve been clinging to your notepad and Canon camera like lifebuoys in the AI storm, you’re not alone. The past few years have seen a flood of generative AI tools washing into the travel writing world, sparking excitement, anxiety, and a whole lot of experimentation. In 2025, travel writers are no longer wondering if AI will impact their work — the question is how to deal with it.
A recent survey of travel writers revealed a complex picture. While many are wary of AI’s rapid rise — and with good reason — others are finding practical, and even surprisingly creative, ways to incorporate it into their workflows. Interestingly, around 68% of respondents admitted they are worried that AI will reduce opportunities in the travel writing field. This anxiety isn’t unfounded: as more publishers and travel brands seek faster, cheaper content solutions, human writers fear being left behind.
These concerns are already reflected in the real world. Over half of respondents (approximately 53%) said they’ve already seen AI-generated content being used by clients or competitors, highlighting the fact that this is no longer a theoretical threat — it’s happening right now. And yet, despite the fears, a notable portion of travel writers — roughly 32% — have taken matters into their own hands and are experimenting with AI tools themselves.
One writer summed it up perfectly: “AI is currently a tool and not a substitute. Going forward the important thing for travel writers is to add personal experience, and include details that cannot currently be found on the Internet.” It’s a sentiment echoed widely. Despite AI’s ability to churn out top-10 lists and generate grammatically correct paragraphs at warp speed, it still can’t replicate the texture and nuance of first-hand travel experience — the kind of storytelling that readers (and editors) crave.
That said, some writers are cautiously embracing AI for what it can do — especially on the administrative and editing side. One respondent confessed, “I feel a lot of shame when I put my work through ChatGPT and it improves it, even with something as simple as a single change of word. I feel like a below average writer. However, I find it useful when I’ve done all my research and am covering my bases in case I missed something.” The mixed feelings are palpable: a little guilt, a dash of imposter syndrome, but also a willingness to use a new tool to ensure accuracy and completeness.
AI can be especially helpful in the early stages of a piece — brainstorming angles, checking tone, or distilling dense interviews into manageable quotes. And for the many freelance writers juggling multiple assignments (and deadlines), tools that speed up grunt work can feel like a blessing. But there’s a catch. The same technologies helping freelancers can also be used to replace them.
One writer reported that they were asked to use AI on a freelance job but ditched it after discovering that “the errors (hallucinations) were so frequent it was quicker to write it myself.” They went on to voice concerns that AI’s integration with tools like Google and ChatGPT — often fed by influencer content and PR-heavy material — risks distorting the information travelers rely on. “If you’re arriving in a city at 2am, readers need verified and honest information... AI isn’t able to generate that without drawing from a well of outdated information.”
Accuracy, then, remains one of AI’s greatest weaknesses. Large language models (LLMs) are only as reliable as the data they were trained on — and that data often lags behind the real world. As one contributor put it: “Most LLMs used by AI bots have out of date information used for training so it’s nowhere near as reliable as an online search for up-to-date details.” They added that while summarizing and critiquing features can be useful, there’s a “big trust issue about what happens to content that goes into the prompts.”
This last point taps into a deeper anxiety among writers — the idea that by using AI, they’re effectively feeding it with the very content that could be used to replace them. The legal and ethical implications of AI scraping content remain murky, and concerns about intellectual property rights continue to grow. Some writers refuse to use AI at all, citing creative and even environmental reasons.
“I refuse to use it both from a creative POV and from an environmental POV,” one writer explained. “You can’t replicate actual lived experience, only copy it — and that doesn’t have the same impact. We just have to hope that quality writing and research continues to be worth more to both the general public and publications.”
Still, not everyone is on Team Doom. A more optimistic take came from a respondent who believes AI could actually raise the bar for writing: “The presence of AI should stimulate writers to step up their game and move away from writing banal roundups and listicles… We’re likely to see an increasingly clear qualitative divide between publications that champion good writing and outlets that use AI.”
It’s a hopeful thought — that the ease of AI-generated fluff might finally make original, well-crafted journalism stand out even more. But for that to happen, writers will need to stay visible, vocal, and engaged. That means making editors and readers aware of what human-authored work really offers: authenticity, personal voice, and emotional truth.
As we move further into 2025, it’s clear that AI isn’t going away. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. When used responsibly and transparently, it can support writers rather than replace them — a sidekick, not a saboteur. But it will take vigilance, adaptation, and a continued push for ethical standards across the industry.
Travel writers have always been good at navigating unfamiliar landscapes. Now we’re navigating a digital one, where the rules are still being written. The challenge ahead is to keep our voices — human voices — heard above the algorithmic noise. Because while AI may be getting better at imitation, it still can’t tell a story like someone who’s been there.
They say success with AI is all in the prompt, but for the above piece our prompt was very, very succinct. Here’s what we asked:
Use the data in the attached spreadsheet to write an 800-word article about how travel writers are approaching and utilising AI in their work in 2025. Use at least three quotes from the responses in column F within the article. Please add some statistics into the article related to the data in columns C, D and E without using bullet points to communicate them. The article must be relevant to an audience of travel writers. It should use a friendly, relatively informal tone, but be highly informative. Please use the final paragraph to draw a conclusion about how AI will continue to affect travel writers and the wider media. Do not use bullet points or lists in the article.
Don’t miss Meera Dattani’s backlog of webinars all about travel writing, all packed with tips from real-life humans. And we guarantee our online travel writing course and digital downloads didn’t see a jot of AI used to create them. Humans for the win!
I confess that while I am, indeed, concerned about losing freelance work to AI, my main concern is the truly disturbing amount of energy and water required to artificially create a drawing or 800-word article. (I run on coffee and anxiety. Cheap.) MIT reckons that by 2030, data centers will account for 21% of the world's power demand. I hope we can find a way to make it more sustainable because it's clearly not going away.
Such a fun and interesting experiment, thank you!