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Welcome to the Travel Transformation Podcast, the podcast where we talk all things travel and all things transformation. I'm your host, Jessica Grace Coleman, and this is going to be a quick solo episode.

I am in the Basque Country at the moment. I'm recording this from my bedroom and we are right on the main road and right outside some traffic lights and construction work, so sorry about the random sound, but that is just how it goes sometimes when you're travelling and recording a podcast.

I am in a coliving at the moment, and we do professional events, and I've just come from a roundtable about ChatGPT and all things AI. I find this subject fascinating and I think it's really useful and it can really help a lot of people in their jobs, whatever they do, as digital nomads and things like that. I found a lot of people here either use it or want to use it, and I thought maybe it would be a good episode to do, because I think it's really fascinating. And I think a lot of people are either scared of it, they don't know how to use it, and they have no idea how they could use it to help their work, their life, travel… there are so many things you can use it with.

So I'm just going to do a quick round-up of what we talked about at the roundtable. I'm not going to go into massive depth about any of this because I'm by no means an expert, but I do enjoy playing around with ChatGPT – and Bard by Google as well. We talked about lots of interesting things, so let's get into it.

If you haven't used it before, ChatGPT is free. There is a free version, but you can pay about 20 pounds a month for the pro version, which is like the next level, which is ChatGPT 4.0. I've only got the free version at the moment, but I might upgrade to the next one if I start using it more for my business.

I run a proofreading, editing, and ghostwriting business, as well as The Travel Transformation Company, so I've got two really different kind of businesses and I can use ChatGPT for both. So, for the editing, I use it for things like… things I would have googled before, I generally ask ChatGPT now. It’s not completely accurate all the time, and I think internet-wise it only goes up to 2021 or something like that, but for things like grammar, punctuation, and content, it's usually pretty good.

And then I usually ask Bard as well and see the answers, and it often gives you different answers, and you sort of tweak them and take bits from each and it's really useful. Say I'm editing a book and the author has written something that's a well-known phrase, like an idiom or cliche or something, and they haven't quite used the right words. Sometimes I'll read it and be like, ‘Oh, they mean this.’ Sometimes I'll read it and I'll be like, ‘I know what they mean, it's on the tip of my tongue… but I can't think of the actual phrase.’ So for things like that, I will go to ChatGPT, ask them, ‘What do you think this phrase is? What is this person trying to say?’ and it usually realises what it is and gives me the right answer, and that's really useful. And if you were to type the same thing in Google, you would get websites related to all kinds of different things and it wouldn't really answer your question in the same way, so that's really useful. 

If I'm not entirely 100% sure about punctuation or grammar in a sentence, I will ask ChatGPT and Bard, see if they say the same thing, maybe consult Uncle Google as well. If I'm really confused, I also have an online chat going with my editor friends so I can ask them as well. So, if ChatGPT, me, my editor friends, Bard, and Google all say the same thing, then I know it's a pretty good job. 

I use it for coming up with titles of things, like someone had me edit their book and they had a really long paragraph for the title. It's kind of like what they wanted the title to be, but they weren't really sure. So I put that into ChatGPT and Bard and they came up with a load of different ones and then I sort of said, ‘I like this one, can you give me more options like that?’ Or, ‘Could you give me more options that have alliteration in?’ Or, ‘Could you do another round of options but include the word ‘wonder dog’?’ (It was about a dog). And it will give you all the options and ‘I can then give that to the client and say, I came up with these with the help of AI. If you like these, but you're not still quite sure about what you want, then use these as a basis and use ChatGPT yourself to come up with more title ideas.’ 

It's really useful for content in general, it's amazing. Copywriting, content writing, and repurposing content. Say I write a blog post and I spend ages on this blog post and then I want to turn it into an email and I want to turn it into an Instagram caption and a Facebook caption and a LinkedIn article, which has to be more professional sounding. I can get ChatGPT to repurpose my words into different social media platforms and things like that. I can give it prompts to use certain tones, certain language, like the LinkedIn writing will be different to Facebook and Instagram, and obviously Twitter needs to be a lot shorter. So I can ask it to condense and you can ask it to make things longer, to pad it out, to shorten it, all kinds of things – really useful.

You can ask it to come up with blog post ideas, podcast episode ideas. I haven't had to do that yet because I have so many ideas myself, but that's a good idea for the future if you want to write a blog post about something and you know what you want to say, but you have that thing where you're looking at a blank page – it takes me back to school, and you have to write an essay and a blank page was the worst thing. You can ask ChatGPT to come up with some headlines for your blog post or whatever you're writing, maybe a little bit of information under each headline, and it's just a starting point for you to get your brain going and so you don't have that blank page, so you can then write out your blog post. 

A lot of things with ChatGPT, and we were talking about this at the roundtable, is that you don't just ask it a question like, ‘Can you write a blog post?’ and leave it; you have to dig deep, you have to dig down, drill down and ask it more questions, ask it to change things.

So I might write a blog post and it will be like a formal blog post and then I'll say, ‘Can you make it more casual and chatty?’ Or I could say, ‘My audience are travellers who want to be inspired by this blog post, they want to be motivated to go out and travel, and I want it to be friendly and casual and fun. Maybe add in some jokes. Use contractions, make it like I'm talking to a friend.’ 

You can give it all these prompts and tweaks, and then you can say, ‘I want it shorter. I want it longer. I want you to expand on this bit. I want to go into more depth about this bit.’ It’s all about the questions and the prompts you give it to drill down and to get what you really want, because when you ask it the first time, you'll get a generic thing and if everyone was to ask it that, they would all have the same content, right? There's this whole thing about who owns the copyright and it's all a very grey area of the law at the moment, but if you keep drilling down, asking it certain things, you will get a more unique response, unique to you and your voice. And obviously, then you can edit it, you can tweak it, so it's not just copying and pasting it from ChatGPT; you're making it your own, which I think is the best way to do it. So, content it’s brilliant for. 

I talked on the Travel Coach Network on a guest coaching session the other week and it was about pitching yourself to podcasts, putting yourself out there, and I suggested using ChatGPT as your interviewer. This also works for job interviews; you can give ChatGPT the prompt to act as something. So, you can say, ‘Act as a podcast interviewer. I'm going on a podcast called the Travel Transformation Podcast’… and you can give it a summary of what the podcast is about, you can say what kind of tone and style the interviewer will have, and then you can ask it to have a back and forth conversation with you. So it will ask you a question, you’ll reply, it will say something about your response and then it will ask you another question, and it will go deeper and deeper. And it's actually a really good way of coming up with ideas for things to say and getting practice conversationally if you don't have a person to help you in real life. So that's really good for preparing for interviews and stuff like that. I think that's an amazing thing. 

Not just work-related but personal-related, I like thinking of ChatGPT as like a modern journal, but a journal that talks back to you. So, if you have a problem or if you just… sometimes people just word vomit on a page just to get everything out of their head. You can do that on ChatGPT. That actually works better for me because I'm a faster typer than I am a writer, like with a pen. So I can just sit there, and I can like word vomit into ChatGPT. Everything in my day, everything that's stressing me out, all the things I need to think about, like just get it out of your head and onto the page – or into the ChatGPT box.

And the good thing is, ChatGPT can respond and give you ideas, or give you a different perspective. Even though it's not a person, sometimes it helps to have ‘not a person’ respond to you and give you ideas. And, if you've got a problem that you really don't want to talk to anyone about just yet, and you don't want your friends or family to know, maybe, or it's just something that you want to work on yourself, then this is a great way of doing it.

My brother actually made a really, really great video on this, on his YouTube channel, Yotty Laboratories – I said that really weirdly, sorry! I can't remember what the video is called, but I will find it and put it in the show notes. And it's all about using ChatGPT as a kind of counsellor friend for if you're going through stuff, sort of about improving your mental health by talking it out with ChatGPT. And obviously, it's not a therapist – it says that as a disclaimer – it won't take the place of therapy, but his video is really great, so I will link that.

So, that's another way you can use it, if you have problems you want to discuss with someone. So we talked all about that.

We also talked about the voice AI that you can upload audio of you speaking and it will emulate that. I don't think it's 100% accurate, but it still sounds really quite like the person. So, say, if I was recording a podcast episode like this and I'm in a coliving, and then I suddenly think of something while I'm downstairs having dinner and I'm not in a position to leave and record it, or maybe there's construction work going on outside and I can't record the extra bit I want to add in. I could just type that into this program and it would spew it back out in my voice, which sounds terrifying, but could actually be really useful for this kind of thing. 

We also talked about deep fakes, which are really quite terrifying. Have you seen the deep fake Tom Cruise on TikTok? On Instagram? Really weird. I think that has the potential to be used for evil in the future, definitely, but hopefully not. 

We also did some tests with ChatGPT, the paid version and the free version, to see the differences. We asked it to write a poem about oranges, and the free version… it was quite good. It's quite short. Obviously, you could then ask it to make it longer and stuff, but we were just doing the initial ones. And the paid version actually came out with a really good poem and, rather worryingly, we put it in an AI content detector… I can't remember the name of the site, but you basically paste stuff in there and it tells you if it was written by a human or a computer, and it said it was written by a human. So that was a bit scary because that conversation came about because we were talking about schools and plagiarism and how, if you're doing the whole drill down and tweaking it and everything, there's really no way to tell sometimes if it is AI or if it's the person writing it. So that was interesting. 

I mean, there are so many ways you can use it. We have family meals every week. We get into teams and we come up with a recipe, come up with an idea, and we got into our teams on Sunday night and the first thing we did was go to ChatGPT and say, ‘We're cooking a family meal for twelve people. Some are vegetarians, some don't eat red meat, some don't eat fish. None of us in the team particularly like cooking or are good at cooking. So we want something simple and easy, what would you suggest?’ And the first thing it suggested was taco night. And we were like, ‘Yes!’ And then we were like, ‘Tell us what ingredients we need for a taco night for twelve people.’ And all the parameters and everything, including quantities. We had our recipe list and then we could just give that to the host who was ordering all the food. So simple.

So, if you're into cooking – or, particularly, if you're not into cooking – ask ChatGPT for recipes or for help. Say that you're bad at cooking, say that you want easy things, and it will only give you stuff that hopefully will be quick and easy. Like I say, just try it.

I'll put the link to ChatGPT, the free one, in the show notes, so you don't have to pay if you just want to play around with it. Google Bard, also free. And yeah, I think it's just a really fun, useful tool that – going forward – I will use a lot. 

I've already been using AssemblyAI for transcriptions for my podcast, and I will be putting my show notes in-depth on my website at some point. And that's really great. It will transcribe the whole thing. It will give you a little summary, it will give you keywords for SEO that you can use… there's loads of stuff. And yeah, it's just a case of playing around with it for a bit, maybe looking up some prompts to start you off with. And just remember to keep drilling down and giving it more instructions so you can get to a point where you have something that you can actually use as a basis for your content or for whatever you're doing.

So, yeah, if you use ChatGPT or Bard or any AI tool for your business, let me know. It’s really good for travel itineraries as well. My friend Irene in South Africa asked it, ‘Can you give me an itinerary? I'm going to Europe for two months, I don't want to spend a lot, and I’m a digital nomad so I need to work. I want to be in nature, but I also want there to be stuff to do like restaurants and bars. I want a place that isn't racist.’ I mean, that's an interesting one.

That's not something you can just go and ask Google really. Is it places that welcome foreigners, that welcome digital nomads? Things like that. And it will give you an itinerary.

But do remember that it stops, at the moment, at the internet of about 2021 I think, so modern bars and restaurants might not be in its wheelhouse to sort of recommend, and things might have closed as well. 

As with anything, with AI, it's a good starting point for anything you do, and I think it can be a real time saver if you embrace it rather than running away from it and thinking it's this big scary thing.

So, let me know if you use any of these tools because I'm really interested in it as well. Email me at info@traveltransformationcoach.com or DM me @traveltransformationcoach on Instagram. Thank you, and until next time, I'll catch you on the flip side, bye! 

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