Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
As AI applications begin to penetrate tourism, there is a growing need to better understand the opportunities and risks AI poses to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To address this, the paper combines a narrative review of the literature for the years 2019–2024 (n = 148 papers) with three targeted queries of ChatGPT, an advanced language model developed by OpenAI. Queries explore how AI is currently used in tourism, its future applications, and the risks associated with its use in achieving the SDGs. Findings suggest that most linkages highlighted in the academic literature are positive, speculative, generic, and optimistic. In comparison, the interrelationships highlighted by ChatGPT suggest greater complexity, ambiguity, contradictions, trade-offs, and effects across scales that have relevance for the individual SDGs. This paper is the first to provide a more systematic overview of AI and sustainable tourism interrelationships and lays out the connections between the various SDG dimensions that will be affected. This provides the groundwork for more targeted empirical research.
Gößling et al. (Thu,) studied this question.