It’s funny how quickly artificial intelligence is integrating into our daily lives. Those who have done most and at least one thing with ChatGPT have created an image with Bing or used the AI ​​on their mobile phones to rewrite a paragraph and make it more formal. This is very interesting. Normally, technology takes time to penetrate users, but AI has entered like an elephant in a china shop. One use that I found particularly useful in my case was as a tour guide.

On a trip with AI. This summer I went on a tour of Budapest, Vienna and Prague. I don’t have the slightest idea of ​​Hungarian or Czech and I only speak half French, so as you can imagine the mobile phone has been a great ally. The route includes places to eat, bus and metro stops, etc. It has always been one of my mainstays when searching, but this year I decided to give AI a chance as well.

Like? Using it to describe things. Google Lens has always been there, but Google Gemini takes the experience one step further. One of the main uses I gave it was translating. But I’m not talking about manually entering text or dictating it, no. If AI allows anything, it’s to be as lazy as you want and get a good result, so take a photo of the poster and say a clear and direct “what does it say here in Spanish?” It was enough to add with .

Using Gemini as a translator | Image: Xataka

The AI ​​not only translated this, but also gave context to what it was looking at. So, when I have a menu in one hand and a drink in the other, I don’t have to tell myself “it looks like a restaurant menu”, but if I’m looking at a billboard or sign on the street, things change. The image above is the best example of this. This extra context and ability to expand information provides more than a simple translation.

So what is it? As a general rule, when my wife and I go on a trip, we go with it a little bit. flow. We’ve seen some of the places before, but we like to get lost and explore the city on foot. If you go to Budapest, you will see the Fisherman’s Bastion, the Parliament, the Chain Bridge or the thermal baths; this is a normal thing, but if you pass by Jozsef Nador Square, you will see a huge building that is guarded and does not have a single sign (this is I Saw) but it is beautiful.

Google Gemini was able to guess what I was looking at from just one poorly taken photo | Image: Xataka

All I had to do was take a photo of the facade to find out what it was. And not even a full photo, but a vertical photo taken badly and quickly. I sent that photo to Google Gemini with a humble “What is this building?” and within seconds I discovered that it was the Hungarian Ministry of Finance building, its history and some curious facts.

A little further on Freedom Square there is a monument commemorating the victims of the German occupation. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you’ll see its description and minimal information regarding discussions about its placement. This statue shows the archangel St. Gabriel, the symbol of Hungary, being attacked by the imperial eagle, the symbol of Nazi Germany. This symbolism has been harshly criticized because it seems to forget that Hungary actively collaborated in the deportation of 450,000 Hungarian Jews to extermination camps during the war.

Monument to the Victims of the German Occupation in Budapest | Image: Xataka

This is not on the sign in front of the monument. I found out about this because I asked Google Gemini if ​​there was any controversy regarding its placement, because in front of the monument there were other smaller monuments made by people with more photos and text that fully describe the controversy. By the way, these are the texts that I can translate and understand better thanks to artificial intelligence.

Summary of the discussion about the monument by Google Gemini | Image: Xataka

What about food? I actually don’t care more or less about the food because at the end of the day I know what I ordered. Even if you’re careful, it never hurts to ask for the recipe or ingredients for a dish. Be that as it may, here I go. During our trip to Türkiye, the waiter brought us tea after dinner. Even though it looked oddly familiar, I couldn’t taste it.

I took a photo of the glass that you can see below these lines. It’s probably the most common photograph you can imagine of a glass with a dark liquid inside that could very well be a poorly made coffee or ordinary tea. Taking into account the details of the plate and the glass, the artificial intelligence managed to discover that this is a Turkish tea glass (tea) This is actually a type of black tea.

Google Gemini deduces from the photo of a glass of tea that it is really Turkish tea in such a simple way | Image: Xataka

But still I don’t trust at all. Although most of the time, especially if these are simple problems, the AI ​​usually works perfectly, I don’t fully trust it. I wouldn’t blindly believe in anything produced by AI, at least not the important stuff. I wouldn’t entrust a paragraph of an article or an important e-mail to an artificial intelligence, but these kinds of things that will ultimately fuel curiosity seem exceptional to me.

It’s simple to use, a lot more than just typing “statue” into Google, meaning “big white building square XX of city YY” or “ZZ”. We all know how to take photos, we all know how to write in chat. Is it easier to do it this way? It’s true that there’s still room for improvement, and you’re always in doubt about whether the AI ​​will hallucinate in response, but that’s the way it is with these kinds of things. You realize the real, practical usefulness of AI in the real world.

Pictures | Xataka

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