AI Planned Her Vacation, With Some Hits (and Big Misses)

Artificial intelligence can get you to a postcard-ready English seaside town, yet still leave you shivering on a cliff while clutching your suitcase. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, travel reporter Dawn Gilbertson let Google's Gemini chatbot design a two-night March escape from London, vowing to follow its plan without outside research, for a destination she "knew nothing about." The bot sent her to Saltburn-by-the-Sea, a little-known Victorian-era resort town on England's northeast coast that Gemini hyped as a budget version of Italy's Amalfi Coast "in a rugged, Northern way." What followed was a neatly organized but frequently imperfect trip: a "walkable" route from the station that turned out to be a perilous slog in high winds and rain; a hyped seafood dinner scuttled by winter hours that Gemini didn't catch; and a long return journey snarled by rail engineering work that the bot flagged too late.

Still, its picks also led to standout moments, from cliffside hiking and a hyper-local chicken "Parmo" dish, to a bracing plunge in the 44-degree North Sea. Plus, "I met more lovely locals and their dogs at almost every stop," she notes. That dip in the North Sea, however, was followed by a more spontaneous immersion on Gilbertson's part in a mobile sauna she'd spotted on her own, an activity that the bot had missed entirely. "I asked Gemini why it didn't recommend this and it called it a 'massive oversight' of the ultimate Saltburn experience," Gilbertson writes. Her final verdict: AI is a useful idea machine, but not a substitute for real-time checks—or serendipity. "I'd leave room in the itinerary for on-the-spot finds," she insists. Read the full piece here to see how Gilbertson's "Jim-and-I" adventure played out.