Introducing Ask Skift, an AI Chatbot for your travel questions

Take and change

In fact, we’re using AI to build the next 11 years of Skift—an ongoing, deep chapter in our relationship with you—to graduate you from Skift reader to Skift user.

Rafat Ali

Today, we are very happy to announce Ash ShiftThe AI ​​chatbot brings back an engine specialized in the travel industry, here to service your daily business queries.

what does it do

Go ahead, ask any question, like “How is Airbnb planning to use AI?” or “Who is the new CEO of IHG?” or “Who are the owners of Ace Hotel?” Or “Write me a short essay on the state of tourism after covid.

How does he find the answer?

We’ve “trained” Skift on the sum of all Skift archives over the past 11 years, including daily stories, research reports, customer trends reports, our special products – Airline Weekly, Daily Landing Report and Skift Meetings – and all US public transportation companies’ annual and quarterly financial SEC filings. Annual reports. As soon as a new story or report is published, it goes directly to Ask Skift.

And this is just the beginning: we’ll continue to train on other travel industry-specific content and information in the coming weeks to refine the answers and expand the universe of possible questions.

What technology is it built on?

We now build this on OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 Deep Learning Artificial Intelligence algorithm (Logic-Learning Machine or LMM for short). We want to use GPT-4, which gives much better answers (we know, we’ve been testing internally in both versions) but it’s cost-effective for now. We expect prices to drop and improve towards that later this year.

* A word of warning: At the moment it cannot answer all your questions, because there is a lot of additional training and adjustment of GPT LLM, more content to train it and most of all to the advanced GPT-take 4 version. We’re pretty sure it won’t take anyone out like other AI bots have done, though.

Why launch it if it’s not completely ready?

As with any generative AI foundational model today, we are in the early testing phase of the algorithm and its effectiveness. We believe that launching a product now allows us to learn all the use cases, make it more accurate, give us ideas on new features to build, and help us figure out exactly how to stay ahead of everyone else in the industry.

One thing we’ve learned since launching Skift: The biggest fear of any new startup is the fear of being judged, and we’re going to get rid of that fear by… launching this and taking any critical feedback.

Where can you find Ask Skift chatbot?

You’ll find the Ask Skift bot on all Skift.com pages in the bottom right corner. The design is the logo for the original Skift luggage tag. Also, you can always go Skift.I This chatbot has a “homepage” and will be the future home of other AI tools and services we plan to launch in the coming weeks and months.

What do you plan to start in the future?

For now, we’re improving the accuracy of the answers and expanding the range of travel industry questions you can ask from around the world. We are working on adding other features like quick report and chart generation, research report summary bots, inbound call request bots, event video transcript and summary bot and more. You will find all our new AI tools on Skift.I When you start.

Who can access the Ask Skift chatbot?

no one. Well, for the first three questions per month, it’s free. And then, for unlimited access, you must become a paid subscriber to Skift’s premium subscription services, such as our daily news service Skift Pro, our proprietary Skift Research, our Airline Weekly service, or the Daily Lodging Report newsletter. check out All our main products, here, and sign up today to get unlimited access to the chatbot. If you are an existing subscriber then log in and ask.

OK, that’s all good, but what’s the reason for this launch, what’s the hole to fill?

Up until now, we’ve had a package-based relationship with our readers – we’ve created a package and presented it to you in the form of a story, a research report or a conference call. Now, with new generative AI tech, question-and-answer-based communication with our users is possible at a scale never before possible. As an expert brand in the travel industry, we must have all the answers to your questions while building this. For the most part, we work locked into different packages and this allows us to unpack our packages and create custom answers for each question.

It’s the building block we’re using to build the next phase, our relationship with you, the next phase of Skift’s eleventh year, to graduate you from Skift reader to Skift user.

How can I contact you for more feedback, partnerships or other questions?

I am always there, always accessible [email protected].