Artificial Intelligence and the Tourism Film

Abstract

Today, the importance of audiovisual production in the tourism industry is undeniable. Whether it's through products designed specifically to promote a particular territory, such as tourism films, or the recent phenomenon known as “film tourism,” in which tourists travel to places they know from the movies, this reality ends up being valued and celebrated at festivals dedicated specifically to this area, such as the Portuguese festival “Art&Tur - International Tourism Film Festival,” the German festival “The Golden City Gate,” part of “ITB Berlin,” or the “World Tourism Film Awards,” organized by the CIFFT - International Committee of Tourism Film Festivals. With the recent massification of artificial intelligence, which even though it's not a recent technology has become the order of the day due to the recent events involving the company Open AI and, more specifically, its online chatbot Chat GPT, the population in general and the scientific community in particular have begun to take a closer look at AI. In the specific case of audiovisual production, while there were a number of tools that already made use of technology in the past and were mainly used in the post-production process (special effects, sound manipulation, etc.), the truth is that AI currently presents some challenges and, on the other hand, some potential, precisely in the first phase of designing an audiovisual work, more specifically, in pre-production. The aim of this chapter is to focus an analysis on the specific case of audiovisual productions conceived in the context of the tourism industry and, from there, try to understand how AI can be an important tool in the creative phase of script design for these works. In the absence of a specific bibliography on the case under analysis, some possibilities for using artificial intelligence to enhance the reach and effectiveness of an audiovisual product designed, above all, to highlight a particular territory or tourist experience will be raised.