When a company describes themselves as having an “AI-first travel product“, you should believe them.

-> Jump to the update from January 2026

It started in August 2024 when I published the following article:

My travel itineraries on Thatch

After some consideration I decided to join Thatch where you can create custom and interactive travel itineraries. All the ones on my profile were created by me, based on my experiences. I did not use any AI in any of my guides, nor will I ever do that. And I only recommend places I have been to myself and liked.

After several people asked me to make easier accessible travel itineraries I started creating them on Thatch, since they are interactive with maps, links and notes and not static like they would be in a PDF. I am not a budget traveller, nor do I care for luxury. Unless otherwise specified everything recommended is mid range.

Where is the difference between the travel guides on my website you can access for free and my travel itineraries on Thatch?

Easy: My travel guides cover one city or one region, with recommendations where to stay, what to do, what to see and what to eat & drink.

The travel itineraries are fully fledged day to day plans with lodging, food, sights and things to do, tours, places and much more. Most of them also cater to one specific topic like Coffee, Adventure, Budget Travel, Travel by Train, etc. and include more than one location.

But happened now? What changed?

Recently (on 11th of March 2025) every “seller” got an E-Mail with the following content:

This made my blood boil. For more reasons than one, but one in particular:

Through it all, you, our creators, have kept travel human.
[…] together with Mindtrip […] an AI-first travel product, paired with your creativity and passion, will ensure we all win.

Travel is human.

AI is theft.

Plain and simple. It “learns” = meaning it steals content from all over the internet. Scraping websites, personal and professional, social media and everything else they can get their hands on. Without consent of the creators. Without paying any license fee for the things we put work and time into. Without any recompense.

And for what? So they can churn out run-off-the-mill travel content with no personal connection. So they can make money off of our work.

Machine learning can be and will be a great tool in the future. But the way it is done right now is unethical and unsustainable. Not just because the “AI” feeds on the things it produced itself and eating said crap turns into more regurgitated crap (sorry for the imagery here, but it fits just perfectly), but also because of the sheer amount of resources it uses. Both massive amounts of energy and clean!! water are needed for every single AI search or text prompt. Even worse for image or video prompts.

Here are some sources where you can read up on AI resource usage:

• As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires – YALE Environment
• Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact – MIT CSAIL
• AI Is Accelerating the Loss of Our Scarcest Natural Resource: Water – Forbes (yes, even in the magazine known for glamorising capitalism)
• AI data centers consume millions of liters per day, threatening local water security – Cryptopolitan
• With AI Data Centers Scooping up RAM, Laptop Prices Could Spike in 2026 – Consumer Reports
• AI Is Heading For an Energy Crisis That Has Tech Giants Scrambling – Science Alert
• We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. – MIT technology review

No, thank you.

As I said previously:

All the [travel itineraries] on my profile were created by me, based on my experiences. I did not use any AI in any of my guides, nor will I ever do that. And I only recommend places I have been to myself [or friends and family, I can’t be at 6 places at once] and liked.

When a company describes themselves as having an “AI-first travel product“, you should believe them. Not human first. Not travel first. Not customer first. No: AI-first.

That is why I have decided to simply publish all my travel itineraries here. For free. Then I don’t earn money from them? That’s fine. At least they don’t get to profit off of my work. Enjoy:

Update January 2026:

This post keeps getting comments from other AI websites. Written by an AI bot. After an AI found this post. The content of these comments is often along the lines of “Thanks, try this AI travel tool.”

Just another proof that AI lacks basic understanding. It is trained to sound confident so people will believe it. And they do. But what we call AI = artificial intelligence today is only machine learning. Large language models. There is no intelligence.

I do not approve these comments and I blacked out their name to not give them any publicity, not even the negative kind.

Der Beitrag From Thatch to Trash – Opinion erschien zuerst auf Kaya Wanderlust.