My favorite way to Use ChatGPT while traveling

It's probably not what you think

A few weeks ago, I was in Madrid with my family. The trip was prompted by the Eras Tour — we decided that instead of a big spring break trip, we’d take the girls out of school to see the Taylor Swift concert in a beautiful European city where I could also see epic art and eat my weight in jamon. (All parenting feedback can be directed to info@mindyourbusiness.org!)

The very educational concert

It’s been a minute since I had such a flimsy grasp on a language, though. I speak passable Italian (rusty in general, elite-level in ordering food/drink), and took enough high school French to translate a menu or a sign in a train station. I don’t, however, speak any Spanish. And even though my three daughters take classes in school, there wasn’t a pressing need to talk about colors, or ask for directions to the library on this particular trip.

So although many locals kindly spoke English with us, when it came time to perusing a menu, I had to break out my phone and tediously feed words into Google Translate* to decipher our options. Until my husband Eric showed me a trick.

He took a photo of the menu and uploaded it to ChatGPT, and within three seconds, we had an English menu to pass around the table. Magic!

A breakfast menu, translated by ChatGPT

He also used it to take a photo of the bill to cross check what we ordered. And when we encountered a funny sign in a little park, we got an instant translation with a ChatGPT voice conversation. (See the screenshot below.)

The sign; the instant translation

My takeaway? As a writer, I have a healthy fear of generative AI. But there are infinite ways to use it, and I’m here for finding the ones that make travel more seamless.

*As I frequently remind my long-suffering children, I didn’t have the benefit of a cell phone, travel booking websites, or Google maps, let alone Google Translate, so I do appreciate it!