😺 Your next tour guide could be AI.

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Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

• Why the travel industry is ripe for AI disruption.
• We share our five favorite Veo 2 videos with y’all.
• There’s a new phone number where you can talk/text with ChatGPT.
• GitHub announced a new free tier for GitHub Copilot!

Advertise in The Neuron here.

Are we about to enter the era of AI travel buddies?!

So last week featured A LOT of AI news. The biggest news of all was probably how much progress the good guys and gals over at Google are making on AI agents.

Example: In this demo, a tourist points her phone’s camera at a Chinatown landmark. She shows it to Project Astra, Google’s new general AI assistant, and asks, “Tell me something about these lanterns.” It answers.

Project Astra | Exploring the future capabilities of a universal AI assistant

With this and holiday szn around the corner, it got us thinking about tourism…

• Which AI tools and tech are making vacationing easier?
• Will human tour guides be obsoleted by AI anytime soon?
• Will real travel agents be put out of biz by AI en masse?

Google also just launched Project Mariner, a browser extension that can help you (eventually) do things like take all activities from a Brazil travel blog and make a 4-week TripIt itinerary. De nada.

Project Mariner isn’t live yet—but some other AI travel tools are.

• The number of hotels using AI chatbots has more than doubled since the pandemic.
• HotelPlanner.ai launched this October and, using data from 8M customer calls to create 20 AI agents, has already billed customers $150K for room reservations.
• Destination Toronto (the city’s tourism arm) recently unveiled a personalized AI travel assistant. With kids and need family-friendly fun? Wanna get wasted with 3 buddies? 6ix spits out personalized suggestions in seconds.

Here’s what it’s like to travel with an AI:

This reporter took an AI companion on a solo trip to Japan, where it helped them find some hidden gems—and was even “superior to Google Translate.” We’re sure Gemini 2.0 has a strongly worded response to that claim!

But, unsurprisingly for you Neuron readers, the AI travel buddy in question gave plenty of stupid advice, too.

Why this matters: Tourism isn’t talked about much in AI circles, but it’s absolutely ripe for the tech. Because let’s be honest—travel-planning is a HUGE headache.

Unless you love making Google Doc itineraries for the whole family (shout out to all the travel planners who do the heavy lifting, we see you…!), trip planning requires a special organization talent + skill for information aggregation that AI is perfect for.

After all, we used to call the humans who helped us plan our trips “agents” too…

Let’s just make sure to quote Matador Network’s CEO: “When you come back and say, ‘We had the most incredible time’... the reason will not be the AI. It will be the people that the AI led you to.”

FROM OUR PARTNERS

Here’s one AI tool we use every week at The Neuron.

Noah rambling… probably

A little well-kept secret for companies crushing it with AI is that only a handful of AI tools are actually worth using.

That’s why we—Noah & Grant—use ChatGPT and Claude, along with a killer product called Attention.

Here’s how it works:

1. We tell Attention exactly what to pay attention to in our meeting (goals, budget, etc).
2. Attention listens in to our call.
3. After, Attention outputs important insights, action items, and follow-up emails.

There are way, way more features, and it’s a must-have for all sales teams. (If you sell anything, literally drop what you’re doing and go book a demo with Attention ASAP).

Top five AI vids of the week!

Despite the avalanche of OpenAI news this week, the biggest release might’ve actually been Veo 2, Google’s AI video generator that, according to the internet, runs laps around all its competitors (yeah… including Sora).

Here are some of our fave demos and side-by-sides:

1. How liquids and solids react with each other (link).
2. Artist working in a dimly lit attic studio (link).
3. A cat roars while looking at its reflection in the mirror but instead sees itself as a lion roaring (link).
4. Penguins experiencing flying… but launching backwards LOL (link).
5. An absolutely awesome skateboard trick (link).

Treats To Try.

1. *Hear how futurist Amy Webb predicts AI will reshape business in 2025—this week on Masters of Scale, supported by premier brand partner Capital One Business. Subscribe to the Podcast.
2. Cinematic lets you create Anime-style short videos—check out these sick examples.
3. 2024 LinkedIn Rewind creates a highlight reel for your LinkedIn activity this year (could either be really cool or really cringe).
4. Project Amelia is a new AI assistant that helps Amazon sellers be more productive and drive more growth.
5. Otterly AI tracks how well your brand/company is performing on AI search engines.
6. Consensus AI gives you research-backed answers to any questions (we use this along with Perplexity!).

See our top 51 AI Tools for Business here!

*This is sponsored content. Advertise in The Neuron here.

Around the Horn.

For you video generator enthusiasts out there, this comparison is *~Chefs Kiss~*

• You can literally talk to and text ChatGPT by calling 1-800-ChatGPT (1-800-242-8478) in the U.S. or by sending a WhatsApp message to the same number (15 mins. free per month).
• GitHub announced a new free tier for GitHub Copilot in VS Code.
• Perplexity acquired a startup called Carbon so that Perplexity can find info in your work files/messages in Notion, GDocs, Slack and other apps.
• Microsoft bought ~500K Nvidia Hopper chips this year, more than 2x as many as its rivals…

FROM OUR PARTNERS

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A Cat's Commentary.