Fake authors are swindling people with shady AI travel guides

BY KERRY TOMLINSON, AMPERE NEWS

Your number one travel tip for 2024 --- stay away from the deepfake authors flooding the Amazon Kindle Store and other platforms with their shoddy travel books.

You could end up writing one of the many bad reviews lamenting your money lost. Even worse, you could find yourself in a vacation nightmare.

These sloppy, fact-poor guides can be hard to spot from the outside, with slick summaries, fake reviews, and promotion on social media. And the flood of these deepfake travel manuals on the top e-book sites shows that these fake authors are finding plenty of victims.

Here's what could go wrong --- and how to make your vacation as deepfake-free as possible.

Watch here:

Misguided

Artificial intelligence can help you plan your vacation. But it can still make up facts and present them as real. Bogus "authors" are spinning up series after series of travel guides without checking facts.

You could find yourself lost as you look for a hotel that doesn't exist, a festival that took place months before, or a monument that's actually three countries away.

Cowabunga!

A New York guide with an author named the improbable "Jorseph Mogarn" recommends inexpensive, clean hotels.

But some of the pictures are actually from a hotel in Asia, painting a far different picture than reality. What the guide says is the 911 Memorial is actually a historic temple in Cambodia.

The author encourages readers to learn and use what he calls useful New York phrases, like "Cowabunga!" and "I'm walkin' here," to help you fit in with the locals. But 'Cowabunga' is not New York street vernacular. And using some of these phrases with locals could have quite the opposite effect.

Money for nothing?

Mogarn is one of a flood of travel authors who aren't real. They're AI, books written by artificial intelligence that often flunk expectations. Many pretend to be real people writing what they claim to be their own first-person experience of the city or country you want to visit. But they're not.

The books are often repetitive, vague, and unhelpful, sometimes copying entire paragraphs word-for-word from somewhere else, like Mogarn's description of the Statue of Liberty taken straight from Wikipedia. Many readers say you'd have better luck --- and more correct information --- just by doing a simple Internet search.

Fake Facts in Vegas

I traveled to four places around the world to show you how these guides can get it very wrong.

First, Sin City.

The "Las Vegas Travel Guide 2024" by Nate Knight says you can catch a show by superstars like Usher, Celine Dion, and Kiss. It provides concert dates for these singers and many more, along with festivals and events. You might plan your trip around the show dates for your favorite performer.

But Usher, Celine Dion, and Kiss aren't playing in Vegas this year, according to their concert schedules. Dion stopped singing last year because of health issues. Kiss hasn't played Vegas for years. And the dates for these performances and a number of other events and festivals appear to be completely made up.

Once again, the guide provides essential phrases to impress the Vegas locals, like "whiskers on the kittens," which the author defines as, "When two dice land with both numbers showing the same digit."

But try using that unusual phrase at the tables in Vegas and you might get laughed out of the casino.

Washington, D.C.

Next stop, the nation's capital.

The "Washington DC Travel Guide 2024 " by Paul S. Gomez appears to simply make up names of DC restaurants that don't exist, as well as local museums for kids, claiming that one's museum's historic carousel will provide a much-need break for families. But the carousel is many miles away. And as families with children know, an unfulfilled promise of a carousel could make for a rough day.

The author also recommends family visits to the DC house of Oskar Schindler, the man featured in the movie Schindler's List.

But Schindler's houses are actually in Germany and Poland, more than 4000 thousand miles away. Your family vacation based on this book could be a monumental failure.

Cabo

Now to Mexico.

The "Cabo San Lucas Travel Guide" by Jonah Beel touts endless opportunities for fun, including "rides on camel-shaped jeep excursions" --- which would make for a popular attraction for many kids. But we searched in the streets and online and found no sign of camel-shaped cars.

That's a bust, but maybe a trip to the "mountains in Cam o bello," as mentioned in the guide, will make the day better. But we found no place called Cam-o-bello here. Not in Cabo, not in Mexico, and in fact we could find no Cam o bello anywhere in the world.

Copenhagen

Our last stop, Denmark, once again with help from Jorseph Mogarn, by way of his "Denmark Travel Guide."

He sends you off to see Copenhagen's famous Little Mermaid statue --- in the wrong location, a long 45-minute walk away.

His book shows colorful and unique sites all over the country. The problem is, it's not this country. His picture of Copenhagen's palace with red-coated marching guards is actually in London.

The unique hotel and zoo camel from the cover of the Denmark book? Actually in Switzerland.

His colorful Denmark harbor with massive Ferris wheel? Actually National Harbor in Maryland near Washington, D.C.

Dramatic Danish evening events with massive neon structures? Actually Las Vegas and Singapore.

Spending time and money trying to find these sights in Copenhagen? Very disappointing.

Warning

Fake five-star reviews and social media promotion can hide the shoddy workmanship. But if you look closer, you can also see scores of unhappy customers.

"I think you need to be really careful about the purchase you make, because the last thing you want to do is have a poor experience on the one two-week vacation that you got to take all year long," advised Shellie Bailey-Shah, a travel writer and founder of the family travel site KidTripster.

Online Traps

Many of these guides show up on the Amazon Kindle Store.

Amazon told us in a statement, "We do not allow content that creates a poor customer experience, regardless of whether or not it is AI-generated."

"We have proactive and reactive measures to evaluate content in our store," the company added. For example, you can click on a Report an Issue section on a book's detail page if you don't like what you see.

But many poorly written AI-books appear to sneak through.

Victims of misinformation

Travel advisor and author Allison Sodha says she hears from travelers who have run into false info roadblocks.

"'Oh, we want to travel here. We hear it's only three hours of a drive.' No, it's a nine-hour drive. 'Oh, I understand I can fly from here to here and take a connection.' Actually, no, that's not true. Those flights are no longer operational."

Some people have planned entire vacations around sites that turned out to be closed for months, she said.

"We are in this era now of false information more than ever before," she added.

TRIPSTER or Trickster?

We took a closer look at one of the authors, Jorseph Mogarn, who sometimes spells his name in different ways

His Amazon author profile picture is a deepfake, a computer-generated photo of a person who doesn't exist.

In the misspelled "introction" of his New York guide, he says he first visited the city when he was 18. On the next page he says he was born and raised there. We checked for any sign of him online besides his author bio and his travel books and found nothing.

We sent a message to his email as a reader. He answered back saying he is from Washington, D.C., and "one of my hubbies is to travel around world."

When we contacted him again as a news reporter, he went silent. This very active author suddenly is at a loss for words about why he’s cheating people out of their time and money.

What can you do?

How can you find travel info that is real and helpful? We checked in with real travel writers for their advice.

Travel site founder Shellie Bailey-Shah follows these four steps for her vacations:

1. Look at guides by reputable authors like Frommer's, Rick Steve's and Lonely Planet. Go to a bookstore in person if needed to see what they sell, since shelf space is valuable and brick-and-mortar stores could be much less likely to sell shoddy guides.

2. Check out travel and tourism bureau sites for the place you want to go, often valuable sources of info. They may have updated information, helpful articles, and sample itineraries for you to follow.

3. Check independent sites by people who have traveled to your vacation spot.

4. Look on social media, like Instagram, for ideas on interesting things to do in that place.

"Does this take time and effort? Yes, it definitely takes time and effort. But travel is a big investment. It's an investment of time and money," Bailey-Shah said. "You want to get the most out of it that you possibly can."

Other tips

Sodha, who has written a travel book called "Go! Girl Guides India," recommends you talk to real humans about your trip --- other travelers, online groups, or travel advisors like her.

Julie Henning, travel writer and owner of travel site Road Trips for Families, says she hits the library for travel guides first. She also dips into Google Maps for visual recon.

"If I book a hotel or an Airbnb in town, I will do this Google Street View and I will scroll up and down the nearby streets see what the restaurants are, see if it looks safe," she said. "Is there a park? What is the playground like?"

Human or AI?

Look for the author's footprint online outside of the book bio, Henning says. She's spotting more and more unreliable online travel content that is plagiarized, false, and concocted by AI.

Travel author Shafik Meghji, who has more than 45 guidebooks to his name for well-known travel publishers like Lonely Planet, DK Eyewitnesses, and Rough Guides, says the situation is "grimly depressing."

"Check out the authors – most genuine ones will have a social media presence, personal website with links to their work, and plenty of newspaper and magazine bylines that are easy to find with a quick search," he said in an email. "Steer clear of guidebooks with cliched, vague, generic and repetitive text and/or photos."

Sculpture of Freedom

If not, you might pay money for a "bad trip," perhaps with the "New York City Travel Guide 2023-2024" by Michelle K. Cordell, where the AI appears to be firmly lodged in thesaurus mode.

Her name for the Statue of liberty? The Sculpture of Freedom, portraying "Woman Freedom" herself, rather than her real name, Lady Liberty.

Central Park? She calls it Focal Park.

In her guide, the New York Giants are the New York Goliaths and the New York Jets are the New York Planes.

The Empire State Building is the Realm Building. The Brooklyn Bridge is the Brooklyn Scaffold. And Madison Square Garden is Madison Square Nursery.

"When it comes to traveling, I think now people are going to have to become more savvy on where they're collecting that information," Sodha said. "We might have to take a little bit more time and be a little more thorough in the information that we're receiving to assure that it is actually accurate."