The New York Times – no paywall: “Creators of travel technology powered by artificial intelligence say their tools can make your life easier by doing everything from planning your dream trip to maximizing your loyalty points to telling you about a cool building down the street. But can they really? The answer, after putting some of the biggest players to the test: Sort of. Droves of seemingly identical A.I. trip planners can help you lay out an itinerary and find hotels and restaurants, with varying degrees of success. The best ones can match the conversational style of chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Of course, travel planning tools also have the same shortcomings as any A.I. program: They don’t always have access to the latest data, they may not have the detailed information of sites like Google Flights, and, sometimes, they just make things up. But there are ways to make the most of them. I got advice from experts and tested out these trip planners, as well as A.I.-powered tools to help you stretch your hotel and airline points and translate conversations. Here’s how they did…”