ZDNET’s key takeaways
You can describe travel ideas in natural language to Google’s tool.Flight Deals surfaces affordable flight options to match your ideas.The tool will roll out in beta over the next week.
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Google is bringing generative AI to the skies.
On Thursday, the company announced Flight Deals, a new AI-powered feature within Google Flights that allows you to describe travel ideas conversationally and surfaces relevant flight options from multiple airlines and booking sites.
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The Skyscanner-like search feature will be rolled out in beta over the next week across the US, Canada, and India, with no opt-in required. It can be accessed here or via the menu at the top-left corner of the Google Flights homepage. As of Thursday morning, it was not available.
What exactly does the tool do?
Google is marketing the new search tool to travelers who are willing to take a more indirect route to their final destination, as long as they can find the most affordable flight option.
“Flight Deals is designed for flexible travelers whose number one goal is saving money on their next trip,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Instead of playing with different dates, destinations, and filters to uncover the best deals, you can just describe when, where, and how you’d like to travel — as though you’re talking to a friend — and Flight Deals will take care of the rest.”
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You don’t even need to provide specific details. For example, say you want to plan an affordable ski trip (admittedly a bit of an oxymoron) but aren’t sure where, exactly, you’d like to go. Then, as Google writes in its blog post, you can just feed Flight Deals the prompt, “10-day ski trip to a world-class resort with fresh powder,” and the system will match that description with bargain flights to locations that may not even have crossed your mind.
Flight Deals can “understand the nuances of what you’re looking for and identify matching destinations,” according to the company.
The feature is being debuted at a time when Google — along with most other major tech developers — is working to infuse its latest AI systems across the full suite of its product offerings. Last week, for example, Google Finance received its own chatbot. Meanwhile, other travel platforms like Airial Travel are adopting a strategy similar to that behind Google’s Flight Deals, leveraging generative AI to make the process of travel-planning process more intuitive and frictionless.