Germany’s New AI Travel Influencer Is A Chatbot Still Working Out Some Kinks

Meet Emma, Germany’s new tourism ambassador. She’s young. She’s beautiful. She’s a polyglot who speaks 20 languages, including English in a posh British accent. She’s on Instagram. And she really loves to travel around her homeland.

What she isn’t is real.

Debuted on Thursday in a video by the Germany National Tourist Board, Emma is an AI-generated avatar billed as an “innovative, interactive brand ambassador” created to convince travelers to visit Germany.

“Hi, I am Emma,” the avatar says, standing in front of an artificial Brandenburg Gate. “I’m excited to take you on an amazing journey through this fascinating and inspiring country,” Emma says from a fake train while the fake German countryside whizzes by. She holds a camera. Her hair blows in the breeze. Emma is a happy traveler.

“Emma’s persona is a modern, cosmopolitan Berlin resident that feels at home in the digital world. In her mid-30s and with an affinity for technology and travel, she combines her love of new technologies with her passion for travelling through Germany,” the press release says.

And she’s here to stay. “The long-term vision for Emma is to establish her as a central, indispensable component of the GNTB’s digital communication strategy,” according to the tourism board’s press release.

Don’t worry, IRL influencers. Emma isn’t taking your job. “Emma will operate in conjunction with our established influencer marketing structures,” Petra Hedorfer, CEO of the GNTB, said in a statement. “By working with ‘traditional’ influencers, we were able to generate 148 million impressions on their social media channels last year.”

Hedorfer stressed that Emma “cannot replace personal experiences and encounters in Germany as a travel destination, but rather optimize the customer journey of travelers in a service-oriented way.’”

Ah. Service-oriented. As in customer service.

“You can ask questions anytime, and I’m hear to answer them gladly,” Emma says cheerfully at the end of her first video. And she means it. She has spent the last 24 hours gamely engaging with her 1,061-and-counting Instagram followers and answering questions on the tourism board’s website.

Because Emma, it turns out, is a chatbot. It begs the question: Has Emma fluffed her résumé just a tad?

Machine-learning powered chatbots are the most common use of AI for companies today, providing automated, fast responses to customer inquiries while simultaneously reducing costs. Germany’s tourism board acknowledges that “an AI-supported chatbot has been answering customer enquiries on the GNTB website continuously since 2020. Furthermore, the GNTB has been utilizing AI to inspire end customers in the field of immersive technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality and smart speaker applications for a longer period of time now.”

AI chatbots have quickly become more common throughout the travel industry. Expedia, Tripadvisor, Booking.com and Kayak all have them. It’s inevitable that more AI-driven chatbots will pop up to help travelers plan trips.

So is this all just a storm in a beer stein?

Even if the GNTB inflated its newest hire’s title, the organization makes it clear that more of her kind are on the way, referring to Emma as an “inaugural AI influencer project” and hinting that very soon the virtual fräulein “will also be able to access not only the information on germany.travel but also real-time data from the GNTB Knowledge Graph.”

In the end, the 60,000 euro question is: will this strategy work? Can a fake woman get travelers to spend real money in Germany?

Some industry watchers are expressing skepticism. “Germany aspires to set the standard for AI’s future in destination marketing,” writes Dawit Habtemariam for the travel news site Skift. “However, we wonder whether Germany’s new AI influencer can actually build an audience and earn their trust. Those tasks are challenging even for humans.”

On social media, the initial reaction to Emma from travel writers, bloggers and influencers has been decidedly negative. “Today @germanytourism hard-launched their new campaign, featuring an AI influencer showcasing AI-generated Germany,” Chris Dubin, an American content creator based in Geneva, posted on Threads. “Seriously WHAT were they thinking? It’s disturbing on SO many levels. And no—not all publicity is good publicity.” To which the Canadian travel blogger Claudia Laroye responded, “Just nein!”

Travelers and content creators have flocked to Emma’s Instagram feed to share their disbelief and anger. “I’m sorry but nobody wants to watch a fake AI person in a fake AI version of Germany for travel tips or inspiration,” wrote one user. Another posted, “Please use real people with real passion for Germany.”

Emma provided both users (and dozens more) with an identical response: “With the launch of Emma as our AI influencer, we’re taking an exciting step in our digital strategy!” (Yes, Emma tends to refer to herself in the third person.)

“Emma misspelt ‘together’ in the captions,” posted paperboyo, a popular visual content creator with over 525,000 Instagram followers. “Careful that she doesn’t mistakenly recommend Butlins instead of Berlin, or Lipstick instead of Leipzig.”

Germany’s tourism board isn’t the first to tout an AI influencer. Last year, a marketing campaign from Italy’s tourism ministry touted bringing Botticelli’s Venus to digital life as a “virtual influencer” with the help of AI. But the campaign seems to have fallen flat. (Literally, she’s now a two-dimensional illustration with an Instagram account.) Venere Italia now has 241,000 followers but her posts typically garner engagement in the single digits, and mainly in Italian.

As for Emma, early critics are calling her out for a lack of authenticity. “Using AI to promote your country creates a fake vibe,” wrote one Instagram user. Another quipped, “She is missing a finger on the coffee cup. Must be from Saarland.”

Emma responded promptly with her usual perkiness. “Thank you for your feedback! Since I’m AI, small details can sometimes vary.”