Exploring Creative AI in Travel and Tourism with Alex Bainbridge - ep 14

[00:00:17] Welcome to Talking Tech With Creative Podcast. My name is Stella Oni and I'm now on episode 14. Thank you so much if you've been following me on my journey. It's been quite a journey. It's been quite exciting diving into so many different industry and sector.

[00:00:35] So I have a special guest. His name is Alex Bainbridge and he's a specialist around tourism and technology and using AI creatively around that. We're going to talk a little bit more about it.

[00:00:49] But I just wanted to talk about what I'm doing at the moment. I'm doing quite a lot of reading and listening to podcasts and so many kind of things I'm digesting around AI and impact on everything.

[00:01:02] And just trying to see what kind of practical steps I can give to people because there's two school of thought.

[00:01:09] The people who are diving deep into it and doing different, incredible things with AI and the people who have no idea and are just starting out or people that are quite fearful of it.

[00:01:20] So I'm going to be doing a solo episode around AI and its impact.

[00:01:24] But I wanted to talk about a notebook LM that came out a few weeks ago or I don't even know if it's up to a month or months ago, a few weeks ago because things move very quickly within AI.

[00:01:34] Right. It's like a podcast style dialogue, AI character dialogue that Google created.

[00:01:40] So basically, if you put your content, any kind of content, even my podcast content into notebook LM, it will generate two AI characters who will actually talk podcast style and analyze what I've said.

[00:01:52] So imagine if you had a textbook or a content that you want a conversation around.

[00:01:57] Two AI characters who actually talk about your content in ways that are very intuitive and quite interesting.

[00:02:04] So notebook LM is out there for anybody that wants to experiment with.

[00:02:08] The other thing is that in the publishing industry, a major publisher, I don't want to name names, although their names is out there.

[00:02:15] I've actually licensed one of their catalogs to an AI startup and the plan to give the authors who sign up to you $5,000 for licensing their work, for getting their work.

[00:02:29] But just to say that the $5,000, the company, the publishing company is going to split out $5,000 because they want 50-50.

[00:02:37] So that $5,000 is actually $2,500 for the author.

[00:02:41] And if you happen to be an author that has an agent, you'll be splitting some of that money with your agent and some other bits.

[00:02:49] So I want to think about if you're quite interested in licensing or if your publisher approaches you to license your work.

[00:02:57] There's quite a lot of strong feelings.

[00:02:59] I had a conversation with Abidemi Sanusi, who is an author and she's quite into AI.

[00:03:05] So you can listen to episode 13 around AI and writing and SEO if you want to learn some more about that.

[00:03:12] But there's quite a lot of strong feelings amongst creatives in the publishing world because there's a fear that the regulation is not good enough.

[00:03:21] The way content was taken from creatives, especially writers, to train the large language model.

[00:03:28] A lot of creatives are not quite happy about that.

[00:03:30] So it's just a real divide going on there.

[00:03:32] Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn, as what she has said was, if you're licensing your work, remember one thing, that you can license your work multiple times.

[00:03:42] So if you are happy for your work to be trained on a model, don't sign a contract that just gives you a publisher access and that's it.

[00:03:51] You can actually have multiple licensing and make money if that is where you want to go.

[00:03:56] So that's like my thoughts on what is going on at the moment.

[00:04:02] I just wanted to record that within this podcast.

[00:04:05] And now I want to introduce Alex.

[00:04:08] So Alex is a CEO and founder of Autura.

[00:04:13] I'm sure I'm not pronouncing it right.

[00:04:15] Alex, he will pronounce it for me anyway.

[00:04:17] So he leads the development of digital experience platform that uses AI to deliver tourism and hospitality and is very good at it.

[00:04:27] So what I want to do now is for Alex to tell us a little bit about himself, actually how he started in this industry in tourism and his experience.

[00:04:37] Alex, welcome to Talking Tech with Creative Podcast.

[00:04:40] And tell us a bit about yourself.

[00:04:42] Starting point.

[00:04:44] Hello.

[00:04:45] Yeah.

[00:04:45] So my background is long now.

[00:04:47] So you have to imagine I am, if you're only listening to this on voice, you have to imagine that I'm now 51.

[00:04:53] So I have actually been in technology, in travel technology for 25 years.

[00:04:59] So it seems like quite a long time, at least to me.

[00:05:02] So I had to get into this.

[00:05:03] Well, I did a degree in computer science, knowledge.

[00:05:07] And then I went, like everyone else does, I went traveling.

[00:05:10] In fact, I drove with some friends from university.

[00:05:13] We drove all the way from UK to Nepal, which took us four months.

[00:05:19] So I had this kind of travel kind of background.

[00:05:23] And then I thought, how do I use the fact that I've got a degree in computer science and I like traveling?

[00:05:30] And that, via a few other kind of things that didn't quite work out, I ended up focused on technology for local tour operators.

[00:05:40] And that's really where I've been for the last 25 years.

[00:05:43] I have spent some time working for some hotel companies.

[00:05:46] I've worked for three different airlines.

[00:05:48] So I have a kind of a rounded background.

[00:05:51] But fundamentally, I'm a techie.

[00:05:53] I like to travel.

[00:05:55] Likes meeting interesting new people from different places around the world.

[00:05:58] And travel technology is the natural place for someone like me.

[00:06:03] That's fantastic.

[00:06:05] So now, so we've got tourism because this is the first time I'll cover.

[00:06:09] No, actually, this is not the first time because I spoke to Anna.

[00:06:12] But it was when we talked about tourism, it was all about experiences for her.

[00:06:16] So I just want to understand the tourism aspect and the creativity, the technology aspect.

[00:06:22] So when you now started working in tourism and then you brought technology, what did you do?

[00:06:27] What was the first thing you did?

[00:06:29] So the initial problem that we were all solving back in 1995 to 2000 was how do you get a product to be bookable online?

[00:06:39] Now, it seems like a long time ago now.

[00:06:41] But in the early days of e-commerce, that really wasn't straightforward.

[00:06:45] You had to be able to pay.

[00:06:46] You had to be able to.

[00:06:49] And before you even could pay for anything, you had to find a product and you had to choose it.

[00:06:53] And then you had to, you know, do a whole booking process.

[00:06:56] But to me, that back in the day was to me, that's a bit like going to a supermarket and then buying a pre-made pizza because the product was set.

[00:07:08] You just had to select the pizza and that was fine.

[00:07:11] But now, in this era, in this generation, we're much more interested in how do people make their own pizzas?

[00:07:18] So if you like your pepperoni or if you don't like your pepperoni or if you're vegan and you don't want any meat or any cheese at all, how do you eat a pizza?

[00:07:28] And so the technology now is much more about how do you help people choose what they should be eating based on their preferences.

[00:07:38] We call that personalization.

[00:07:41] 25 years ago, it was all about money.

[00:07:43] So how do I manage to get some money off someone's credit card so that they can book something?

[00:07:48] So technology has evolved a lot in 25 years.

[00:07:51] Yeah, that's fantastic.

[00:07:53] But you like your what you're doing at the moment, the platform you created has to do with AI.

[00:08:01] So can you tell us a little bit about that, what you're doing in the AI space?

[00:08:06] So you've moved away from where you were now to the point where you are now offering AI based experience.

[00:08:14] Yeah. So my last business that I sold actually in 2016 or so, after I founded that in 2003.

[00:08:22] So I've been running that business for 13 years.

[00:08:25] At the end, we had a lot of tour bus customers.

[00:08:29] Now, tour buses are a significant backbone of how local tourism works all around the world.

[00:08:37] In some places, they're big buses, like 50 seaters.

[00:08:41] But in other places, they're smaller buses, like 10 seaters.

[00:08:44] And because fundamentally, if you as a consumer go to a location, you will want to go and visit the castle.

[00:08:51] You will want to go and visit the ruins.

[00:08:52] You will want to go and see whatever it is.

[00:08:55] And transport is a fundamental part of that.

[00:08:58] So I've been working in this in the bus sector within tourism for a while.

[00:09:02] And then I saw this massive new change about coming over the horizon.

[00:09:08] And that is these autonomous cars, which is removing the driver.

[00:09:13] So what do you do if you have a vehicle that has no driver?

[00:09:18] All of a sudden, you've now got no tour guide also.

[00:09:23] Because two reasons.

[00:09:26] One is that the driver is often the tour guide.

[00:09:29] And secondly, these vehicles are much smaller.

[00:09:32] They're only going to take four or six people.

[00:09:34] So just you and your family.

[00:09:36] So there is no commercial space to put a tour guide, a human tour guide in there.

[00:09:41] So we were like, OK, how do we solve that?

[00:09:45] So we had to start building these AI solutions to deliver the tour.

[00:09:50] Because that is what's necessary when you have an autonomous vehicle, a self-driving car.

[00:09:56] And so as autonomous vehicles become more regularly available, then this will become a natural way of taking experience in your vehicle.

[00:10:08] So because it's still like a dream to people like us.

[00:10:12] I'm in London.

[00:10:13] So autonomous vehicle, I don't have any experience of it.

[00:10:16] But I know that there are parts of the world, like San Francisco, where it's being used.

[00:10:21] So we cities now are using driverless vehicles.

[00:10:27] And...

[00:10:28] Yeah, so in the UK, it is legal, actually.

[00:10:30] One of the last bills that got royal assent just before the Conservatives left power in 2024

[00:10:38] was this bill called the Automated Vehicles Bill.

[00:10:42] Now, I don't want to sit here talking about legal bills.

[00:10:45] However, that does mean that in the UK, it is now legal.

[00:10:49] So there are companies in the UK operating autonomous vehicles.

[00:10:53] But we are, as a nation, very advanced in terms of the engineering side of the autonomous vehicles on a global basis.

[00:11:01] And a lot of British technology is inside autonomous vehicles that you will find in other countries.

[00:11:08] But as a nation, in terms of scaling up, we're not quite there yet.

[00:11:13] There's been a lot of trials, and they've all been great.

[00:11:16] And there's even a London-based company called Wave.

[00:11:20] There's an Oxford-based company called OXA.

[00:11:23] Several leaders in the field who are all based in the UK.

[00:11:26] But yes, fundamentally, on a global basis, the two areas where this is all taking off is China and the USA.

[00:11:37] So in the USA, for example, Google, via one of their companies, technically it's Alphabet.

[00:11:42] Let's not get into Google's legal structure.

[00:11:45] Owns a company called Waymo.

[00:11:48] Waymo, three cities today.

[00:11:50] They're in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.

[00:11:53] And they've said that they'll be in 10 cities by the end of 2025.

[00:11:57] And in China, Beidou, which is fundamentally Chinese Google, is in 10 cities using a company called Apollo, which is owned by Beidou.

[00:12:10] So yeah, so I think it's 10, 15 cities where you can absolutely get in an autonomous vehicle today, which is really exciting.

[00:12:19] And then there's other companies that you may have heard of, companies like Tesla, who have got a slightly different view on life.

[00:12:26] So they're not so interested in creating what we would call a service area, which means, hey, you can take this vehicle in San Francisco.

[00:12:34] They're much more interested in saying, you are going to own one of these vehicles, and therefore you'll have it in your garage, if you have a garage.

[00:12:43] And therefore you can use this wherever you like.

[00:12:45] You're not going to be constrained by any particular area.

[00:12:49] So for example, if you live in London and you want to go to Stonehenge, you could just use a Tesla and it would drive you there.

[00:12:55] So I'm expecting that not now, but I'm expecting that certainly by the end of this decade, yes.

[00:13:02] So adoption, what do you think?

[00:13:03] How do you think adoption will happen?

[00:13:05] Before we go on to the services you're offering within this, what do you think about adoption?

[00:13:10] How do you think people will take to that?

[00:13:12] Yeah, people have been in the US, for example, in San Francisco, that used to be, the market used to be Uber and Lyft.

[00:13:20] Lyft is a US only retail company.

[00:13:24] Uber's more global.

[00:13:25] Uber, and now the stats are that Waymo has now equaled Lyft.

[00:13:30] And they've only been operating taxi services in San Francisco for 12 months, post 5-10 years of testing.

[00:13:37] So there's been a lot of work to get to that point.

[00:13:40] But yeah, so from an adoption perspective, the scaling up is absolutely happening.

[00:13:47] And consumers are there.

[00:13:48] So autonomous vehicles is a fundamental building block of using AI to deliver experiences.

[00:13:55] It's not the only building block, but it is a pretty fundamental change.

[00:13:59] And it's one that, I don't know, maybe it's because I've had 25 years of experience in this,

[00:14:04] that you tend to think over slightly longer timelines.

[00:14:08] If you speak to a 20-year-old about what's going to happen in 10 years' time, they're not so good at that.

[00:14:15] However, if you talk to a 50 or 60-year-old about what might happen in 10 years' time,

[00:14:20] because they've got more life experience, because they've seen more change happen in their life,

[00:14:25] they're more willing to understand that change does definitely happen over time.

[00:14:30] It does.

[00:14:31] Okay, so I just want to understand how you've now, how you've put your creativity into the tourism.

[00:14:39] Can you take us through what you've done?

[00:14:42] Yes, we have characters and we operate experiences in character.

[00:14:47] So you could go on a James Bond experience with Miss Moneypenny as the guide, for example.

[00:14:53] But beyond that, and that's a very creative process to work out who these characters should be,

[00:14:59] but it's a fairly straightforward process.

[00:15:01] But more interestingly, I think from a creative perspective,

[00:15:05] is the very definition of what a tour is changing.

[00:15:10] So today, for example, you would, because the industry is dominated by buses,

[00:15:16] you actually have to have a fairly popular product in order to fill your bus.

[00:15:22] So if your bus has got 50 seats, and you're going to run that bus every day,

[00:15:27] you'll have to sell thousands of tickets a month just on that one topic.

[00:15:32] And what that means is we end up with a lot of products that are very mainstream,

[00:15:39] in the same way that commercial radio is mainstream.

[00:15:43] But what we end up evolving to is a scenario that's much more like Spotify,

[00:15:49] where you listen to the music that you like, and no one else has to listen to your music.

[00:15:54] You just have your music, and someone else has their music.

[00:15:57] It's not like commercial radio, where therefore commercial radio, like, oh, I just this.

[00:16:02] But with Spotify, you go, oh, I love this, because this is my music.

[00:16:06] And that is where we'll end up.

[00:16:09] We will end up there, which means there's actually a very large opportunity for creativity.

[00:16:16] Because all of a sudden, instead of having to create experiences that are just popular,

[00:16:21] we can create lovable and hateable experiences.

[00:16:25] So, for example, in San Francisco, we've got a product that is a poetry evening.

[00:16:31] And you go to a different bar, and then you get a poem.

[00:16:34] You go to another bar, you get a poem.

[00:16:36] That would be, or short story.

[00:16:38] And that would really be unattractive to people who really don't like poetry, short stories.

[00:16:45] However, for the people who love it, they're going to go, oh, my goodness, this is amazing.

[00:16:49] We're talking about personalization and niche.

[00:16:52] Yeah.

[00:16:53] Same thing.

[00:16:53] Yeah, so all of a sudden, you end up with this massive burst of creativity, which we're about to see.

[00:17:00] And so AI, far from AI actually destroying creativity, it actually creates the platform for new creativity,

[00:17:07] which is really exciting.

[00:17:10] So that's one of the things that drives me, is how do we make that happen?

[00:17:14] Because it's not going to happen by itself.

[00:17:16] It needs a little bit of a push.

[00:17:19] Yeah.

[00:17:20] Okay.

[00:17:21] So the question I want to ask is, I think in a creative world, one of the misgivings that they have is that, so once you've licensed, so let's say you take a piece of someone's work, you license it, you might not need that again.

[00:17:32] So if it's poetry, for example.

[00:17:34] And to be candid, I listened to someone recently who is able to use AI to produce.

[00:17:39] He's a poet and he's an artist.

[00:17:43] Like, I think he's a comedian or rapper.

[00:17:45] And he's been able to produce, like, with the same thing, different variations.

[00:17:49] So I think what creatives are scared of is not that, yes, we're not going to use the creativity, but you might use that once.

[00:17:56] And license it.

[00:17:58] And then you don't need the creative anymore for that particular piece of work.

[00:18:02] I think that is the concern that they have.

[00:18:07] Yeah, I agree.

[00:18:08] But there's going to be new business models.

[00:18:10] So you can't take the old business model and go, let's apply the old business model to this new thing.

[00:18:16] So let me give you an example of that.

[00:18:18] If you were an actor or actress 100 years ago in the UK, you would have been on stage.

[00:18:25] You would be on musical.

[00:18:27] You'd be touring the country, doing your show to reasonably small audiences, but good audiences that paid you a living.

[00:18:36] Right.

[00:18:36] And every local town had a theatre and put on these shows.

[00:18:43] Now all those theatres are shut.

[00:18:45] The only theatres that exist are the theatres in the big cities.

[00:18:49] Yeah.

[00:18:50] But instead, all of those people who used to probably be actors now in this generation or five generations on are now YouTube creators.

[00:19:01] It's approximately the same skill.

[00:19:04] It's not exactly the same skill, but you have to engage with people.

[00:19:08] You have to show something that's interesting for 10 minutes.

[00:19:12] This is what people used to do 100 years ago as a touring actor or a touring actress.

[00:19:17] And people now become content creators.

[00:19:19] So this is just an evolution.

[00:19:21] It doesn't mean that just because one thing goes, doesn't mean that everything goes.

[00:19:26] New things arise.

[00:19:28] So what we're saying basically is that people just need to go and understand this thing and scale up in a way.

[00:19:35] Because if they don't, some people might continue to do things the old way and some people might just evolve and have new kinds of skills.

[00:19:43] That's what you're saying, isn't it?

[00:19:45] Yeah.

[00:19:45] Yeah.

[00:19:45] But the problem is that you actually have to build these new platforms.

[00:19:48] You couldn't in 1900 have said, oh, I'm going to become a YouTube content creator if there wasn't YouTube.

[00:19:55] Right.

[00:19:55] You need the new platform to be built by people like me.

[00:19:59] That's where people like me, entrepreneurs like me.

[00:20:01] That's where we come in.

[00:20:02] We build that and then everyone else can join it.

[00:20:06] So that's how it works.

[00:20:07] But no, so people can't jump skills just immediately, not unilaterally, i.e. not by themselves.

[00:20:16] They need a new platform to go to.

[00:20:18] And if they have a new platform, then they can join that.

[00:20:20] And it's my mission to work out how we can make enough money through amazing creative content that we can pay people to make that content.

[00:20:29] That's the mission.

[00:20:31] Yeah.

[00:20:32] Okay.

[00:20:32] Let's talk about the creative, but for the ones you've done now with the characters,

[00:20:36] let's kind of talk about what the creative process is.

[00:20:40] So if you can explain what characters is and the creative process that went into that,

[00:20:44] because I think you use some old existing work already.

[00:20:49] Yeah.

[00:20:49] So creating characters.

[00:20:51] So first of all, you have to design the character.

[00:20:54] Now, the character generally is historical or could be someone fictitious.

[00:21:00] For example, those are the two main areas.

[00:21:02] We can do characters that are real current living people,

[00:21:05] but that comes with more interesting rights issues.

[00:21:08] So let's leave them for the second.

[00:21:11] So a historical character would be King Henry VIII, for example,

[00:21:15] where King Henry VIII, there are no rights issues on King Henry VIII,

[00:21:19] but it's not that I'm aware of.

[00:21:20] There are rights issues to people who have been deceased in the last 70 years, for example.

[00:21:26] So you can't, there's various rules that you can do.

[00:21:29] And in different countries, the rules are all different.

[00:21:32] So it becomes slightly messy.

[00:21:34] So we decide what character it is that we're going to have.

[00:21:38] And then we basically describe their features and say,

[00:21:42] how does this person talk?

[00:21:43] How does this person, what do they know about?

[00:21:46] What do they not know about?

[00:21:47] And we don't have to provide all of the information that they know about,

[00:21:51] because the AI already knows that.

[00:21:53] In fact, what we're trying to do is stop the AI from knowing something

[00:21:58] that the character should not know.

[00:22:00] For example, Miss Moneypenny on these James Bond experiences,

[00:22:05] we say, you do not know anything about any technology after the 1970s,

[00:22:10] which is slightly confusing.

[00:22:13] But the reason we do that is because she has to be an old Miss Moneypenny

[00:22:16] from the 1960s and 70s.

[00:22:20] And so we get very, we do that.

[00:22:22] But we then have issues.

[00:22:24] So with the creative process, there's a lot of creative process

[00:22:26] just generating these characters.

[00:22:28] It doesn't take very long, actually, but it does require a little bit

[00:22:31] of expertise.

[00:22:32] I'll give you another example of an issue we hit was King Henry VIII.

[00:22:36] And of course, what you do is you say, oh, please be King Henry VIII AI.

[00:22:40] And AI becomes King Henry VIII.

[00:22:42] King Henry VIII probably wouldn't make a very good tour guide because he's a king.

[00:22:46] Right?

[00:22:46] So we were like, oh, he's a bit boring.

[00:22:49] How do we make King Henry VIII fun?

[00:22:51] So we ended up in the definition of the character saying, oh,

[00:22:54] it's King Henry VIII at a party.

[00:22:57] And that, by saying it's King Henry VIII at a party,

[00:23:01] all of a sudden made him this jovial character.

[00:23:03] And all of a sudden, he's much more entertaining now because he's a host

[00:23:06] at a party.

[00:23:07] So, of course, he's more interesting.

[00:23:08] Whereas previously, he was like, oh, I'm not going to deal with you

[00:23:11] because you're some like minion.

[00:23:13] And therefore, yeah.

[00:23:14] Yeah.

[00:23:15] So first of all, we have to design the characters.

[00:23:17] And then we have scripts.

[00:23:20] And scripts are bits of content that are pre-generated that we can then drop into scenarios.

[00:23:26] And the reason why we do that is because we want the creative people,

[00:23:32] i.e. authors and local tour operators, to be able to direct these characters.

[00:23:38] We can't just let the characters randomly go off and do what they want.

[00:23:41] We have to set them scripts so that they do as directed.

[00:23:45] And that's fundamentally it.

[00:23:47] And then once we've gone through those two steps, they're in the platform.

[00:23:51] And then we then operate the experiences.

[00:23:53] And every bit of content, including audio, is all generated in live time or just before

[00:23:59] live time.

[00:24:00] So as you're going along, the content is actually being generated behind the scenes based on where

[00:24:05] you are, for example.

[00:24:07] So what I'm going to do, I don't even know if it will happen, is if I get a clip of some

[00:24:12] sort, we might put it in here for people to actually visualize what we're talking about.

[00:24:16] Because even me, I'm trying to wrap my head around it.

[00:24:20] So what you're saying is that you have a script, right?

[00:24:24] Yeah.

[00:24:24] You develop the characters and then what happens?

[00:24:27] So is it like a, are they in a car or, because I've seen some, Anna, I think was able to show

[00:24:35] a little bit to me.

[00:24:36] Yeah.

[00:24:37] What happens in a local area where those characters are?

[00:24:41] So at the moment we can do pedestrian, which means you're walking along.

[00:24:45] We can do bike and scooter, which is always good.

[00:24:47] Do you wear headphones?

[00:24:49] Do you, what do you do?

[00:24:50] Okay.

[00:24:51] That's good.

[00:24:51] How do you absorb?

[00:24:52] Yeah.

[00:24:53] How do you?

[00:24:53] From a tech perspective, we do definitely use your phone today.

[00:24:58] So if your phone is using, has got, if you've got Bluetooth earbuds or something, then that's

[00:25:04] pretty good.

[00:25:04] The next step, which we don't have today.

[00:25:07] So there's no announcements.

[00:25:09] I can't quite see how we're going to get to this, but I'll come on to the reason why

[00:25:12] in a second, but glasses, AI glasses.

[00:25:15] That's the next thing.

[00:25:16] For example, I can see, Selly, you're a glass wearer.

[00:25:18] So I can absolutely see that you will be using AI glasses in the future.

[00:25:23] People who don't wear glasses are probably less inclined to start wearing glasses just

[00:25:28] because it happens to have AI in it.

[00:25:30] But that means you won't have to look at your phone.

[00:25:32] So I'm liking that.

[00:25:33] But the reason why I'm slightly struggling with glasses is because they're quite expensive.

[00:25:40] And I don't know if I, as a tour operator, want to buy 10 pairs of glasses to give to

[00:25:45] 10 customers and then have to get them all back at the end of the tour.

[00:25:49] That sounds a bit horrendous.

[00:25:50] Because they get broken and all sorts of things.

[00:25:52] So we have to wait until consumers have their own glasses, just like they've got their own

[00:25:57] smartphones.

[00:25:58] But that means that we'll have to probably wait quite a handful of years.

[00:26:02] And then after glasses, I think today's phones, tomorrow's glasses.

[00:26:07] And then in five years time, I don't think we'll be using glasses either.

[00:26:11] I think we'll be using projected holograms.

[00:26:14] So that will be really exciting.

[00:26:16] Yeah, I'm still going to ask more questions.

[00:26:19] So let's start with the phone.

[00:26:21] Because with the glasses, I'm even struggling to say, okay, would there be a camera on my

[00:26:25] glasses?

[00:26:26] What is safety if I have a camera on my glasses and I'm walking along with this thing on?

[00:26:32] How about safety?

[00:26:34] How is safety?

[00:26:35] You can see through the glasses.

[00:26:37] So you can still see what you're looking at.

[00:26:39] Your brain, right?

[00:26:39] Yeah.

[00:26:40] And then you can see.

[00:26:41] It's like when they do this, because I spoke to somebody who was doing it and you have

[00:26:46] these Pokemon games where, you know, the young, not even young people, like people go to go

[00:26:51] and try and grab the characters because augmented reality and all that stuff.

[00:26:56] So I'm trying to understand how to work with, but let's even leave the glasses on its own.

[00:27:00] So let's say I've got my phone.

[00:27:02] Yeah.

[00:27:03] This is my phone now.

[00:27:04] What do I do?

[00:27:05] What do I need to do with it to get into my tour with characters?

[00:27:10] Yeah.

[00:27:10] So you need to download our app called Altura Connect.

[00:27:14] And if you come from a tour operator, then it would be branded as the tour operator.

[00:27:19] I think.

[00:27:20] And then the tour operators we work with are selling tours.

[00:27:24] And then our tech is in their tours.

[00:27:25] But you can actually access the characters directly on our phone, on your app.

[00:27:30] So you don't get a tour, but you can just play around and see what they can do.

[00:27:36] Yeah.

[00:27:36] So that's it.

[00:27:36] I think that, as I said, phone today, ultimately, we're not going to be technical on that.

[00:27:41] We'll be embedded within vehicles.

[00:27:44] So it'll be in the vehicle system.

[00:27:49] But that's not what we are today.

[00:27:52] Today we're an app.

[00:27:53] Which is important because it means that everyone can use it.

[00:27:56] But also the reason why we're an app is because when you get out of the car and you go into a restaurant, we want you to have the tech with you.

[00:28:03] So therefore, if it's in your car only, then you can't use it when you go into a restaurant.

[00:28:09] So that's a bit of a dilemma.

[00:28:11] About to have an experience continuously with the app.

[00:28:14] Yeah.

[00:28:14] You're interacting with the app and getting this experience through the app.

[00:28:18] Yeah.

[00:28:18] It really depends what kind of a customer you are.

[00:28:21] So if you're a leisure user, you don't really care about storytelling, to be fair.

[00:28:26] You might say, of course.

[00:28:27] But a regular leisure user doesn't really care about storytelling.

[00:28:32] They don't, as they're walking around their hometown, want all these stories about what's been happening and what's going on.

[00:28:37] What they want is, am I going to get to the market before it closes?

[00:28:44] That's all they care about.

[00:28:45] They don't really care about learning about local culture because they live there.

[00:28:50] Whereas a tourist in the same location will be like, oh, that's a really interesting story about whatever it is they're learning about.

[00:28:56] So I would prefer that if you think about a leisure user, they tend not to care too much about storytelling.

[00:29:04] And they're very focused on what I call logistics.

[00:29:08] Whereas a tourist cares about logistics only to the point that they don't want to get lost or they don't want to arrive late somewhere.

[00:29:16] But actually, they're quite focused on storytelling.

[00:29:19] So different types of consumer are very different.

[00:29:22] And you would be a leisure consumer in your hometown.

[00:29:25] But you might go to a city that's 200 miles away and all of a sudden you'll be like a tourist.

[00:29:30] OK, that's interesting.

[00:29:32] So I just wanted to ask about because I attended and we met at the World Travel Market and I attended a minister's summit.

[00:29:40] And there was quite a lot of talk on AI on how each of the countries are adapting, are going to try and adapt AI to their local tourism.

[00:29:48] And quite a few of the ministers were talking about authenticity, being authentic and storytelling in terms of like using local resources, in terms of collaborating with local people as well.

[00:30:01] So for you, for example, like in terms of what you're offering, what are your plans for those kind of places?

[00:30:09] So when you go to, say, different countries, what are your plans for that in terms of like collaboration with the tourism?

[00:30:16] Well, the one thing that really concerns me and what drives me on actually is how do we maintain local storytelling and local culture?

[00:30:24] That's good. Yeah.

[00:30:25] Because the most likely outcome, as it looks today, is that we end up with what I call, and I don't mean anything negative about this brand, but it's a brand that everyone knows.

[00:30:37] So I'll just use it.

[00:30:38] We're going to end up with a Starbucksification of storytelling.

[00:30:42] And what I mean by that is that you as a consumer will go to France and then you'll go the next week to Edinburgh in Scotland and you're getting the same style of storytelling.

[00:30:54] No, if you're in France, you want French storytelling.

[00:30:58] And if you're in Scotland, you want Scottish storytelling.

[00:31:00] And if you have a single entity such as Google becoming the AI storyteller, they are going to have the same storytelling on a global basis.

[00:31:11] So my entire approach is enabling.

[00:31:14] And that's the reason why we work with local tour operators, local content creators, is because I want that local story.

[00:31:21] And that concerns me a lot about the globalization of storytelling.

[00:31:26] And I think that would be a real miss.

[00:31:29] So the ministers, when they all talk about that, they are right, but they can't just talk about it.

[00:31:35] They have to actually action.

[00:31:36] And the only action they can do is either to create their own local storytelling platforms.

[00:31:41] But you can't do that because these platforms are hard to build and we're competing against Google.

[00:31:48] So we've got massive headwinds here.

[00:31:51] So we need those ministers not just talking about those things, but actually saying, OK, we'll come and do a project with Alex.

[00:32:00] That's me.

[00:32:01] Maybe you should talk to Saudi Arabia because they want to develop and they're doing quite a lot.

[00:32:06] So maybe they might be ones to talk to, really.

[00:32:09] Yeah, Saudi Arabia have got a different issue, which is that 90 percent of the tourism in Saudi Arabia is Umrah and the Hajj.

[00:32:17] I was going to get the slightly wrong way around.

[00:32:19] But so only 10 percent is tourism beyond that, which is what they want to grow.

[00:32:23] But they can't grow.

[00:32:24] They can't grow the tourism.

[00:32:25] But their second issue is that it's very hot.

[00:32:28] So most of the things that are available to do for tourists in Saudi Arabia are evenings where it's slightly cooler.

[00:32:34] However, the biggest growth opportunity for Saudi Arabia is actually cruise tourism and cruise tourism.

[00:32:41] The cruise ship passengers want to be back on their ship in the evening.

[00:32:44] They don't want to be elsewhere.

[00:32:46] So they have a little bit of a climate issue.

[00:32:48] Obviously, there are cooler places in Saudi Arabia, such as there's going to be the skiing in Saudi Arabia.

[00:32:54] So there definitely are cooler places.

[00:32:57] It is a but it's.

[00:33:00] Yeah.

[00:33:00] So.

[00:33:01] Yeah.

[00:33:02] So I think it's a it is a bit of a.

[00:33:04] They've got every country has different assets in terms of what they can do from a storytelling perspective.

[00:33:11] So you need to when you talk about this country versus that country, people like me who are tourism entrepreneurs.

[00:33:16] You just said Saudi Arabia and I could just rattle off three or four key issues that they've got in terms of how do you make.

[00:33:23] How would you deliver storytelling in Saudi Arabia?

[00:33:27] And I think different countries have got different different needs in terms of the UK, for example.

[00:33:32] The one thing that we need and forget about storytelling.

[00:33:35] We just need 5G to work everywhere because we need good mobile connectivity to be available nationally.

[00:33:43] And right now, that's not the case.

[00:33:45] And we can't go around telling everyone that we're some majorly developed nation when we haven't even got 5G properly working in all the places we need it.

[00:33:55] So which so saying that which country excites you in terms of like the things that you're doing now that you think, oh, my God, I'd like to work in this country.

[00:34:04] And I think they're ready for what I have to offer.

[00:34:08] That is a good question.

[00:34:10] The USA is good from an autonomous vehicle perspective.

[00:34:13] We struggle with China because we use bits of technology in our app that are not licensed in China.

[00:34:20] So for us, the USA is a natural because it's English, Spanish market.

[00:34:27] It's got good international visitors, local visitors to local people, national tourism.

[00:34:32] Yeah, I think that's where our scale up is happening.

[00:34:34] But obviously, we're a UK company, so it's nice to focus on the UK as well.

[00:34:39] Yeah.

[00:34:40] Yeah.

[00:34:41] Yeah.

[00:34:41] So in terms of what is going on now, what emerging technology do you think will have the biggest impact on travel?

[00:34:47] I'm sorry, it's over the next five to 10 years.

[00:34:49] I think I'll go back to the point I just made, which is the biggest impact will actually come from one government saying in the UK saying, please, can you do some serious 5G investments so that we've all got good mobile data?

[00:35:01] Because if you don't have mobile data, your phone doesn't work.

[00:35:04] And then you can't use AI.

[00:35:05] You can't use any of this stuff.

[00:35:07] So it's depressing.

[00:35:10] So that I know you probably expected me to come up with some grand technology that needs to happen.

[00:35:16] And when that happens, you're going to get this amazing outcome.

[00:35:19] I'm like, you've got to get the foundations right.

[00:35:21] And the foundations are 5G.

[00:35:23] Once you've got 5G working everywhere.

[00:35:25] So that means I can turn on my phone and I can use data without thinking that I'm going to have a major data cost.

[00:35:33] I'm actually going to have a connection because that's not always the case in the UK.

[00:35:36] And there are countries like South Korea who are absolutely able to deliver this.

[00:35:42] And there are other countries like the UK who have the headquarters for all of these mobile technology companies.

[00:35:49] But yet we still really don't have great mobile technology.

[00:35:54] Shane, really.

[00:35:55] I think I've talked a lot about people's misgivings and all that.

[00:35:58] We talked about writers and artists and who would some writers and artists would like to do some collaborations with technology company.

[00:36:08] Can I give you an example of where I think AI will actually help writers?

[00:36:12] So I'm currently listening to your book on Audible, Deadly Sacrifice, which probably isn't my natural choice of book.

[00:36:23] But I'm enjoying what I've heard so far.

[00:36:25] So that's great.

[00:36:25] But do you know where AI would have helped you?

[00:36:29] Maybe.

[00:36:32] Is there were all these...

[00:36:33] It's a police detective crime.

[00:36:37] I'm sure all your listeners know all about the books, but I'm just recapping that.

[00:36:42] The book is...

[00:36:44] There's a lot of police procedure in it.

[00:36:47] It is, yeah.

[00:36:48] And you must have done a lot of research on police procedure in order to write that book.

[00:36:55] And what an AI could have done...

[00:36:57] Forget about writing the book.

[00:36:59] What the AI could have done is you could have given a chapter to the AI and said,

[00:37:04] can you please review this chapter and tell me if I have met all of the current or all of the police procedure that was appropriate for that time period,

[00:37:14] whatever period it was said.

[00:37:16] And that is what AI can do.

[00:37:18] AI can come along and go, ah, okay.

[00:37:21] No, actually, that detective would not have said that because the process at the time was that they would have gone to their superior to ask them about that question.

[00:37:30] Now, that will make your book much more...

[00:37:33] So I'm not saying there are any mistakes because that's not my expertise either.

[00:37:36] But you as an author will now have a lot more confidence that if you've written a crime story,

[00:37:41] that you have met all of the correct procedures that would have been in place.

[00:37:46] And this might give you more confidence to write on topics that you're not expert in.

[00:37:52] Because you're like, oh, I can now write a thriller based on, I don't know, horse racing culture.

[00:38:00] And you might know enough about it to write the book.

[00:38:03] But you're like, oh, I really need a vet to read this.

[00:38:06] Because if I had a vet read this, they would probably tell me that I've got this bit slightly wrong.

[00:38:12] Now you can chuck your chapter at the AI and say, imagine you're a vet and you're reading this book.

[00:38:18] Can you please tell me the bits that I haven't quite got right that need to be fixed before we publish this?

[00:38:27] And that's what AI can do.

[00:38:29] So I'm not so interested in AI generating your entire book.

[00:38:33] I think it's a tool to help you build your scaffolding of your book and deliver your content

[00:38:39] without someone six months later reading your book going, oh, you didn't quite get that police process quite right.

[00:38:47] I think what we normally do anyway, for me, if you don't have that background, is you actually use a police consult anyway.

[00:38:53] So you don't, I didn't write it without a police consult who went through it every day.

[00:38:59] But that's where I think AI is going to help.

[00:39:03] I think AI is going to do that.

[00:39:05] And not only do it at the end, which is what you may have had to do, but actually do it as you're writing.

[00:39:10] Or even when you're trying to create new storylines.

[00:39:12] You're like, what would have happened if, and you go, oh, no, hang on a minute, that would not have happened because.

[00:39:17] So the misgiving that authors have, because I'm writing book two at the moment, and I'll tell you how I am doing it.

[00:39:23] The misgivings that authors have is they don't want to, not all the authors, that's why I said there's a split in the author,

[00:39:31] the fiction world, writing world, because people don't want the AI to be trained on their work.

[00:39:37] I know you can switch that or somewhere where you don't want to write a book and you're training the large language model because in a way you're training it.

[00:39:45] So there's quite a lot of people.

[00:39:47] Personally speaking, I write my book outside of that.

[00:39:52] But what I'm doing now is, which I found really useful, is I'm using the procedures I'm actually going through.

[00:39:59] So I've not done any outline, but I've said, this is the scenario.

[00:40:05] Yeah.

[00:40:06] I've set a scenario and the AI tool is able to say this is the scenario.

[00:40:10] And I found out that I've been able to work faster with that.

[00:40:13] And then once I'm done, I'm giving that whole book to my police consult to go through it as well.

[00:40:19] A human person to go through it.

[00:40:21] But I've been able to work much faster than when I was writing the first book.

[00:40:26] So there were so many things because the way I write, I write multiple characters in multiple things, doing multiple things in multiple settings.

[00:40:37] So I could have a setting where people are super wealthy and then I can have a setting where people are really poor and I can have a middle class setting.

[00:40:45] And then, of course, I need the kind of scaffolding procedure.

[00:40:49] If you enter an helicopter, what happens?

[00:40:52] What is the noise?

[00:40:53] Those are the kind of little bolts and nuts that you could get help with.

[00:40:58] But I would not put my, I'm still not ready to put my work in there for now.

[00:41:05] Yeah, I think that's it.

[00:41:06] For example, I think that is, I think people have to use these tools how they want to.

[00:41:14] The concern, of course, is that these tools are not going to get any worse.

[00:41:20] They're going to get better.

[00:41:20] So they are, that's the challenge.

[00:41:23] So my biggest fear, and I work in AI.

[00:41:27] So people might say, Alex, what are you doing?

[00:41:30] I'm like, yes, but I'm, I can see this is an issue.

[00:41:33] And my entire mission is how do we retain the local company or the local content creator to be enabled and not only just be enabled to do it, but also to make money.

[00:41:45] That's the fundamental of how the world works, at least in the West.

[00:41:49] And that is something that, you know, that we have to all address because otherwise we are going to end up with a consumer going to the East End of London and taking a Google experience.

[00:42:01] What's that?

[00:42:02] What is that?

[00:42:03] And not only that, but the Google experience will have read your book, by the way.

[00:42:08] And therefore it probably be a pretty good rendition of your book as a tour.

[00:42:13] And that concerns me because I'm like pretty good in technology tends actually to win.

[00:42:20] It's never normally the best that wins.

[00:42:22] It's just the pretty good ones that win.

[00:42:24] So pretty good is often good enough.

[00:42:27] So this is what we're talking about that because of the way the language models were trained, which is on our content, because my definitely sacrifice was part of the content because he was able to analyze my book.

[00:42:41] He was able to analyze my whole book.

[00:42:44] And he had in-depth knowledge of my book.

[00:42:46] But how they thought it, I don't know, but he did.

[00:42:49] He knew my book.

[00:42:50] But I use that.

[00:42:51] We can say you are a character and you are, I don't know, Marie Antoinette.

[00:42:59] You just say to the AI, oh, you pretend to be Marie Antoinette.

[00:43:03] And of course, the AI knows who Marie Antoinette is.

[00:43:07] So from a creative perspective, that means that you just, to me, that now has to be just something you have to accept and go,

[00:43:20] OK, that's how it's going to be.

[00:43:22] Therefore, my role in this is to be creative at a different level than what I've been creative before.

[00:43:27] I have to do something different that the LLM can't do.

[00:43:30] This is like these university professors who, when they hand out their question for their essay,

[00:43:36] they also give a chat GPT response to the same essay quiz and go, I say this essay, here's what the AI says.

[00:43:47] You have to, your essay has to be a bar better than this thing that's been created by the AI.

[00:43:54] Because this is what the AI can do.

[00:43:56] So therefore, you have to be, as humans, better than that.

[00:43:59] That is both a blessing and a curse, because it's a blessing, because it means that if you can be there, great.

[00:44:07] It's cursed because it's hard to do that.

[00:44:09] But also, it's hard to convince consumers that there's value in that.

[00:44:14] Because if the consumer is happy enough with the general content, it's like, maybe that's good enough.

[00:44:22] And that's the, this is the concern.

[00:44:24] And I get all these concerns, but I think that we just need to collectively work out how we're going to, what we're going to do about it.

[00:44:32] The alternative is that we're going to end up with this kind of Google Starbucks experience globally.

[00:44:40] And that worries me a lot.

[00:44:42] So it looks as if you're quite worried, because you've mentioned Google quite a few times.

[00:44:46] It's important to mention names that people recognize.

[00:44:49] I'm very happy to mention names that people don't know, but then you would all be going, what is he talking about?

[00:44:54] So why we use names that people know?

[00:44:57] Because that doesn't necessarily mean that they are themselves the threat.

[00:45:00] It just means that big tech from Silicon Valley, they're all good employers today.

[00:45:05] So these are all good companies.

[00:45:06] They're not evil.

[00:45:07] They've got no evil intent.

[00:45:08] It's just the nature of the technology is that this tech now can do people's jobs.

[00:45:15] And if tech can do people's jobs, obviously there will be an impact on employment.

[00:45:24] That's the nature of it.

[00:45:26] It's going to be huge.

[00:45:28] It's going to be huge.

[00:45:29] Because, for example, what I say to authors is just be more human.

[00:45:34] So a lot of authors are be more human, have your community around you who are loyal to you, who would go for what you want and do that.

[00:45:42] And they're not going for generic stuff.

[00:45:44] Because for me, I am a consumer, but I am quite picky about what I like.

[00:45:50] And I will go and I will buy what I like.

[00:45:52] So just be more human around it.

[00:45:54] You cannot be technically better than AI.

[00:45:57] I can say that now.

[00:45:58] But you can have authenticity and you can have personalization.

[00:46:03] You can have different ways for you to be your authentic self.

[00:46:09] So that's what I say to people.

[00:46:11] Let's talk about personalization a second.

[00:46:13] Because personalization can mean two things.

[00:46:15] It can mean the discovery of the product.

[00:46:18] So you will like this book or you might not like it.

[00:46:21] But the other area is the delivery of the product itself.

[00:46:25] So once someone has discovered that book, the actual book itself is the same.

[00:46:31] You imagine now you're watching a Hollywood film in five years' time.

[00:46:37] And you, as the person watching this film, are vegetarian.

[00:46:42] And the main character goes into McDonald's and orders a burger.

[00:46:48] Right?

[00:46:50] In five years' time, the consumer might, the main character might go into McDonald's and order a salad.

[00:46:58] Because it may not make any difference to the actual plot line of the story.

[00:47:03] It just, but what it has done is for the vegetarian viewer, they've gone, oh, okay, this isn't quite such a bad.

[00:47:09] They wouldn't have liked the idea of the main character going in and buying a burger, a meat burger.

[00:47:15] They wanted to see.

[00:47:16] So you can actually have personalization of the delivery if that is not relevant to the, or if it doesn't impact the story of the story.

[00:47:25] Of course, if the whole premise of the story is that the customer eats this burger and it's meat,

[00:47:31] and then two chapters a time, there's some, something happens because they ate meat.

[00:47:36] Of course, you can't change that storyline, right?

[00:47:37] You have to keep that storyline in.

[00:47:39] But if it's not relevant to the storyline, you can personalize the experience to the reader.

[00:47:45] So the reader goes, oh, I quite like these books because we've now got a vegetarian version of Deadly Sacrifice.

[00:47:51] Well, actually, we've got a vegetarian version of Deadly Sacrifice.

[00:47:54] You know what I'm trying to say is perhaps there wouldn't be, you can have a vegetarian version.

[00:47:58] And that's what personalization means is that there might now be 10 different versions of Deadly Sacrifice.

[00:48:03] You might have a Deadly Sacrifice that's based in Bristol because it's been, because a Bristol reader might go,

[00:48:10] oh, I like this, but I don't really like London's even actually.

[00:48:12] I quite like the idea of it being based in Bristol.

[00:48:15] I'm getting the money for that.

[00:48:17] The thing that worries me is that everything is like a wild west out there at the moment.

[00:48:23] We really don't know where we're going.

[00:48:25] So that worries me a little bit because we just don't know the impact on work.

[00:48:30] But I can, I know that the impact is going to be huge because things will be automated and people who can save money will save money.

[00:48:36] A lot of people are saving money even at the moment as we're talking because they found ways.

[00:48:41] I am more productive because I use Chargipity in terms of other things, not for my writing, but for other things.

[00:48:49] And I've become more productive for that in terms of different things as well.

[00:48:52] AI has just been very helpful and it will continue.

[00:48:56] So that worries me that the adoption might go faster than the government can cope with in terms of when,

[00:49:04] if employers adopt it and they know they have to let jobs go, which is already happening,

[00:49:09] but it might just happen in droves.

[00:49:12] And that's very worrying.

[00:49:14] I don't know whether I'm ready for that.

[00:49:16] The jobs thing that worries me slightly as now a senior, I'm not too senior, but in terms of age, let me just get my phrasing right.

[00:49:26] The thing that worries me is that it's the junior jobs that go first.

[00:49:31] And the natural evolution of things is that junior people become senior people.

[00:49:39] So if you don't have junior people anymore, then where do the senior people come from?

[00:49:47] That's the bit that concerns me slightly, is why would we hire a junior person?

[00:49:54] And that's the bit that will have the largest impact.

[00:49:58] Yes, so that's a worry.

[00:49:59] So the question I want to ask as well, because I'm going to wrap up now, is,

[00:50:03] so as a leader in travel tech, how do you approach creative problem solving?

[00:50:07] Because you've told me about some issues that you've come across.

[00:50:11] Because you've got the industry, some parts of the industry are not quite ready for what you have to offer.

[00:50:16] So how are you navigating this terrain?

[00:50:21] Yeah, with difficulty, I think is the hardest answer.

[00:50:25] In tour operating, which is a sort of a subsection of tourism in general,

[00:50:31] doesn't look at this as a big problem that they have to face yet.

[00:50:37] All of the last innovations in the last 25 years have been about retail and about distribution.

[00:50:42] So how you book, how you pay, booking on an online travel website.

[00:50:47] And now all of a sudden, we're talking about product.

[00:50:50] We're talking about what is it that people pay for?

[00:50:52] And of course, if it's digitally delivered, people are not going to pay $75 or $100,

[00:50:58] because they're, which is what they pay today for a human tour.

[00:51:02] They might just pay $5.

[00:51:05] And why would they pay $5 if it's free on their phone?

[00:51:08] The whole, so you know, this is the bit, this is the bit.

[00:51:14] So my sort of mission on this is, how do I approach it?

[00:51:19] My mission is to just build.

[00:51:20] We've just got to keep building.

[00:51:21] We've got to keep our heads down and build.

[00:51:24] And that's the only way to make this work.

[00:51:26] I'm very lucky that I've had a prior exit in the industry,

[00:51:31] meaning I've sold a business before.

[00:51:32] Which means that there's natural people who want to work with us.

[00:51:37] And there's more cash in the bank, maybe.

[00:51:39] Although maybe not so much now.

[00:51:42] That is, that's how it, and I think we have to win this.

[00:51:47] Because if we don't win this, what's going to happen?

[00:51:49] As I said, you're going to end up with a Google experience in East London.

[00:51:53] Globalization.

[00:51:55] Yay!

[00:51:56] You don't want the Starbucks vacation at all.

[00:51:57] We need to win.

[00:51:58] And so somehow we need to build a whole group of allies who are all going to understand this is a...

[00:52:04] But the problem fundamentally is that most people really don't get this as a problem.

[00:52:09] So they're not looking for a solution.

[00:52:12] And if, and by the time people realize this is a problem, it might be too late for a solution.

[00:52:18] This has climate change issues all over it, which is like the same with climate change.

[00:52:22] I've told you, it's like the Wild West at the moment.

[00:52:25] Everything I'm doing, I'm looking, I'm hearing, I'm listening, and I'm like, oh my God.

[00:52:30] And the governments don't even, I don't know whether there's a bridge between the governments and the people that are creating it.

[00:52:36] It's just, it's tiring.

[00:52:39] Anyway.

[00:52:40] I think, I'll stay back in a year's time, Stenner.

[00:52:44] And we'll have a, we'll chat about this again.

[00:52:46] Because things are changing so much that it'd be interesting.

[00:52:49] And what, where I think that this, where this conversation has been really interesting for me is the interface between creativity and AI.

[00:52:58] And I think that we should be, we should really be having our eyes wide open, especially if your business is writing words.

[00:53:08] Because this is what this is about.

[00:53:10] But if your business is storytelling, then this, then we need to make sure that humans with AI are more powerful than AI by itself.

[00:53:20] So that means you actually have to become friends with AI because humans plus AI has to be bigger than AI.

[00:53:28] And what, what we won't, what we absolutely won't have is humans better than AI.

[00:53:34] The only thing that's going to be better than AI is humans plus AI is better than AI.

[00:53:39] So that means everyone has to get their heads in gear.

[00:53:41] The AI is not a bad thing.

[00:53:43] It's an okay thing.

[00:53:46] But we also just need to have a reality check and go, this is just how it's going to be.

[00:53:49] So we know you get on with it and, and just, and, and deal with it and hope that, hope that we're not a local corner shop that gets somebody finds that they have a Starbucks around the corner from them.

[00:54:00] And we actually, you know, we need to be, we need to be better than that.

[00:54:07] Anyway, let me ask you one more question.

[00:54:10] So what's one creative project outside of travel tech that you'd love to pursue someday?

[00:54:15] Let's move away from this.

[00:54:18] I do.

[00:54:19] I've been thinking, I do, I quite been creative, but I'll tell you the one thing that I would like to learn more is I would like to become better at cooking, which I think is creative.

[00:54:31] I do cook.

[00:54:32] I do cook.

[00:54:34] And I'm reasonably good at cook, but I'm, I'm very much a recipe follower.

[00:54:38] And therefore I've got no capability.

[00:54:42] I've got no imagination to be able to create recipes myself.

[00:54:45] Right.

[00:54:45] So I am very good at following recipes.

[00:54:48] And to me, that is a level of creativity that, that I have in technology and that I have in all my other sort of fields I work in, but I absolutely do not have when it comes to cooking.

[00:55:00] So I would love to get better at cooking to the point where I could be creative rather than the point today where I am a recipe follower.

[00:55:11] That's fantastic.

[00:55:12] That, if you're cooking out there, Alex is jealous of you.

[00:55:16] That's all I can say.

[00:55:18] Dude, it's such an interesting thing, food.

[00:55:20] Yeah.

[00:55:21] I would love to get better at it.

[00:55:22] I'm, yeah.

[00:55:23] Give me a recipe.

[00:55:24] Give me instructions on the back of a bit of cardboard like you get from the shop.

[00:55:27] I can do that.

[00:55:28] I can do that.

[00:55:30] Follow it in the letter.

[00:55:31] So Alex, where can people reach you?

[00:55:33] And I'm sure they want to play with Artura.

[00:55:38] Yes.

[00:55:38] So go to Artura.

[00:55:40] Artura.

[00:55:41] Artura.

[00:55:41] Artura.

[00:55:42] It's a made up word.

[00:55:43] So you can pronounce it how you like.

[00:55:44] But it is a made up word meaning auto and tour.

[00:55:47] That's what I mean.

[00:55:49] But also in French, it means around here.

[00:55:51] So it's my camera.

[00:55:52] Around here.

[00:55:53] On the corner.

[00:55:53] I wasn't speaking to France the time again.

[00:55:56] So I did pretend to speak French occasionally.

[00:55:59] So if you go to Artura.com, A-U-T-O-U-R-A.com, you can download the app and you can also scan.

[00:56:09] There's a QR code on the homepage and you can scan some of the characters and have a little conversation with them.

[00:56:15] And that's a great place to go.

[00:56:18] Fantastic.

[00:56:19] Thank you so much, Alex.

[00:56:20] It's been great talking to you.

[00:56:23] Listeners, don't be too confused.

[00:56:28] We'll get there.

[00:56:29] Be confused.

[00:56:30] Be confused.

[00:56:31] But look for allies.

[00:56:32] I'm an ally.

[00:56:33] I'm using AI, but I'm a creative ally.

[00:56:36] And not everyone is.

[00:56:38] So if you are confused, just find me.

[00:56:41] I'm on Twitter.

[00:56:42] It's not called Twitter anymore.

[00:56:43] I'm on X.

[00:56:45] I'm on LinkedIn.

[00:56:46] Although, just find me and just engage.

[00:56:49] Because I love debating anything to do with this.

[00:56:51] And I loved talking to you today, Alex.

[00:56:54] Thank you so much for coming to the podcast.

[00:56:56] And we're going to have you again in the future because we know that in a few months' time, things will change again.

[00:57:01] So definitely we'll be bringing you back.

[00:57:03] Absolutely.

[00:57:03] I'll tell you what we'll do is you and I can go on the street and actually go and do a deadly sacrifice tour.

[00:57:08] How about that?

[00:57:09] No, why not?

[00:57:10] As long as you're not going to feed my world.

[00:57:12] It's already been fed anyway.

[00:57:13] Like I told you, he was able to analyze my novel.

[00:57:16] So it's been Googleized.

[00:57:19] Oh, my goodness.

[00:57:20] If we both come back, then we've both still got our hands attached to our arms.

[00:57:24] Then I know we've done okay.

[00:57:26] Thank you very much, Alex.

[00:57:28] Bye, everyone.

[00:57:29] Bye.

[00:57:29] Bye.

[00:57:29] Bye.