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from the and-don't-miss-all-the-Tim-Horton's! dept.
As reported by The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/17/23836287/microsoft-ai-recommends-ottawa-food-bank-tourist-destination
and
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/artificial-intelligence-microsoft-travel-ottawa-food-bank-1.6940356
In 2020 Microsoft laid off dozens of journalists, in a move to rely on artificial intelligence. Those journalists were responsible for selecting content for Microsoft platforms, including MSN and the Edge browser. A recent tourism article now reminds us of that earlier business decision.
Published last week and titled "Headed to Ottawa? Here's what you shouldn't miss!" the article listed 15 must-see attractions for visitors to the Canadian capital. Microsoft has since removed the article that advised tourists to visit the "beautiful" Ottawa Food Bank on an empty stomach. That appears to be an out-of-context rewrite of a paragraph on the food bank's website. "Life is challenging enough," it says. "Imagine facing it on an empty stomach."
The remainder of the must-see list was rife with errors. It featured a photo of the Rideau River in an entry about the Rideau Canal, and a photo of the Rideau Canal in an entry about Parc Omega near Montebello, Quebec. It advised tourists to enjoy the pristine grass of "Parliament Hills."
The article carried the byline "Microsoft Travel." There is nothing on the page that identifies it as the product of AI. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the article was generated. While now removed, it is still available via the Internet Archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230814223742/https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/travel/headed-to-ottawa-here-s-what-you-shouldn-t-miss/ar-AA1faajY
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2023, @06:15PM
Ignoring the stupidly enormous rural areas that are technically part of the city, Ottawa is really quite a small municipality with a disproportionately large population of well-paid 9-5 white collar workers. Outside of its position as the seat of the federal government there are simply not a lot of tourists and thus not a lot of things to do as a tourist that you can't also do almost anywhere else.
So you can check out parliament, the supreme court, check out a handful of pretty cool museums, go wander around to find various foreign embassies, and then you're probably better off hopping on the train for a short ride to Montreal which has more history and actually has a nightlife. The Rideau canal is pretty cool but if you want to go see the canal it is in my opinion much more interesting to leave Ottawa and go to one of the many cute small towns elsewhere along the canal (the best way to experience the canal is of course by boat, you can take 3 or 4 days to go from Ottawa to Kingston and stopping at various places along the way).
Perhaps the most interesting part of Ottawa is the extensive amount of green space that is in and around the city (which includes places like the canal, the arboretum at the central experimenal farm, and the nearby Gatineau park). But while these spaces are awesome for people who live in and around Ottawa, and are good to check out if you are in Ottawa for some other reason, they are probably not compelling enough to actually travel to Ottawa specifically for them.