Kayak has launched new AI features that let people ask the chatbot for travel tips and find flights with just a screenshot. This brings Kayak in line with many other travel sites that offer AI services for trip planning and now price comparison.
PriceCheck, one of Kayak’s two new AI features, lets users check if they’ve found the best price by taking a screenshot of flight information they’ve found elsewhere. Kayak said in a statement that users can upload a screenshot of any flight, even if they see a flight on a competitor’s website, and PriceCheck will “search hundreds of sites to see if we can find a better price.” can.”
Matthias Keller, chief scientist and senior vice president of technology at Kayak, said in an email the edge That service uses AI to extract information from screenshots, such as schedules and airlines, and searches the internet for cheap flights using customer parameters.
“It’s used for content that’s relevant to the consumer as well as compelling alternatives,” Keller said. “It’s also a way for us to attract new customers, including those who are loyal to a particular airline or program, because Kayak Price Check can find a better price even within that preferred provider.”
This type of AI is called computer vision, where models can scan an image or PDF and extract information such as key terms or objects. Google, Microsoft, and Apple have been using computer vision for years to identify faces in your photos to tag them or search for terms in badly scanned PDFs.
Kayak wants to make it easy for users to get answers to any travel-related question. Travelers can ask the Kayak chatbot, Ask Kayak, if they have any questions about travel planning or want to narrow down places to stay or things to do. For example, people can ask the chatbot questions like, “What’s the cheapest destination to visit this weekend?” or “Give me a hotel in New York City for under $300 a night.”
Ask Kayak is currently available to users in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, but will be rolled out to other regions soon. The company created Ask Kayak with ChatGPT.
As generative AI services became popular, travel planning was one of the first use cases expected to be disrupted. Kayak isn’t the only travel website exploring how creative AI can improve how customers search for flights or hotels. Expedia said the edge It wants to use more AI features so more people can start their travel planning on the site instead of Google.