Weldborough, a small rural town about 110 kilometers from the city of Launceston, in Tasmania, recently experienced a bizarre spike in visitors thanks to the hallucination of an AI agent that invented a non-existent tourist attraction and invited people to discover this “tranquil heaven” that offered a “peaceful escape”.
It all started when Tasmania Tours, a travel website focusing on Tasmanian tourist attractions, started using AI to rapidly publish fresh content in an attempt to keep up with the big players in the tourism niche. Usually, the AI did a decent job, and there was always a human checking the blog post before it was published, but this time around, the AI messed up, and there was no one to catch its mistake.
In a since-deleted post on the Tasmania Tours website, travelers were invited to discover the Weldborough hot springs in the forests of northeast Tasmania. They were touted as a must-see attraction and a favorite among hikers, but they didn’t really exist; they were just an AI hallucination.
Scott Hennessey, the owner of the company that runs Tasmania Tours told ABC News that “the online hate and damage to our business reputation has been absolutely soul-destroying,” adding that they only started using AI to keep up with the competition.
If the post hadn’t made any real impact, it would have probably never been noticed, but people were really excited about the hot springs, and many made the journey to Weldborough.
Kristy Probert, owner of the local Weldborough Hotel, told CNN that she was confused when people started calling and asking about the “famous” Weldborough hot springs. Then people started arriving in droves, asking about this attraction that none of the locals had ever heard of.
“It was only a couple of calls to start with,” Probert said, “but then people began turning up in droves. I was receiving probably five phone calls a day, and at least two to three people arriving at the hotel looking for them. We’re in a very remote location so it was very random.”
Experts say that this story is a sign of things to come. People are relying more and more on AI for discovering travel destinations, planning their itineraries, and even calculating costs, and hallucinations aren’t going away anytime soon, so people are likely to fall victim to such made-up stories in the future.
