Turo recently announced integration with ChatGPT for more accessible travel planning.
Vehicle rental startup Turo bills itself on its website as “the world’s largest car sharing marketplace.” The company, which boasts over 1,400 makes and models operating in more than 11,000 cities across the United States, Canada, Australia, France, and the United Kingdom, is more or less Airbnb for cars. People needing a car for a weekend getaway or whatever else can essentially rent cars from hosts on the platform. You book your ride, pick it up, and return it when you’re finished. For Turo, it’s a way to “help put the world’s 1.5 billion cars to better use.” As of the end of last year, Turo has over 160,000 active hosts, 320,000 active vehicles, and 2.9 million active guests. Turo is available on the web, iOS, and Android.
Like countless others, Turo is smitten by artificial intelligence.
The company has utilized the latest version of OpenAI’s uber-popular ChatGPT-4 technology to create a plugin that allows prospective users to use their voice in searching for the best vehicle for them. In a recent interview with me conducted over email, Turo chief data officer Albert Mangahas explained that, although artificial intelligence is the tech topic du jour right now and poised to disrupt myriad industries, there remains one sector that, he told me, has been “historically slower” at adopting new technologies. That business is travel and transportation.
“At Turo, we are aiming to shake up the antiquated industry [of travel] by taking a [modern] technology-forward approach. This year, we announced partnerships with [online travel agencies], and have continued to invest in machine learning to enhance the search experience, real-time risk management, and risk-based pricing optimizations,” Mangahas said of the company’s product strategies. “With the new GPT-4 plugin, we are now able to leverage AI to further build a seamless, more convenient experience for Turo guests.”
Mangahas acknowledged ChatGPT’s hype in the current tech landscape, telling me OpenAI has been “making waves” with what it's built. For Turo’s part, he believes the company is the “the first car-sharing or rental car company” to integrate with ChatGPT. According to Mangahas, ChatGPT Plus subscribers who have the Turo ChatGPT plugin installed have the ability to tell the chatbot about their travel plans, of course utilizing ChatGPT’s natural language capabilities. Users can tell ChatGPT when they’re traveling, what type of car they’d prefer, and their budget, and the software will, Mangahas told me, “dive into Turo’s extraordinary selection to provide personalized car recommendations.”
Mangahas gave a hypothetical use case. “For example, you can simply say, ‘I’m going on a trip with a few friends to [Lake] Tahoe [in California] and need an SUV in San Francisco from June 1 to 10. What do you recommend I book on Turo?’ The plugin will then respond with a personalized list of recommended vehicles that match your criteria.”
Despite ChatGPT’s enormous popularity within the tech industry, from engineers and the commentariat alike, Mangahas said the software is relatively obscure in the wider world. As such, he told me Turo’s newly-announced integration with the chatbot isn’t something customers have necessarily stormed the Bastille to get their hands on. The benefits of artificial intelligence on the travel industry, he said, isn’t something average consumers are well are of at this time. For Mangahas and his team, however, the company is pushing hard to ingratiate themselves as one of the paragons of travel, akin to Kayak, Airbnb, and others. Turo believes the partnership with OpenAI will help them do that. Elsewhere, Turo has forged relationships with Delta Airlines and Capital One whereby cardholders earn points and miles on their accounts when they book a ride with Turo. In fact, the Capital One deal was touted by Mangahas as being “the first-of-its-kind between a major credit card and peer-to-peer car-sharing platform, and was very well-received.”
"We want to continue simplifying the Turo experience and enhancing the overall travel ecosystem. [The] GPT-4 plugin is another step in the right direction,” Mangahas said of Turo’s goals in leveraging technology.
Looking at the Turo-OpenAI marriage from an accessibility standpoint provides more insight into how generative AI systems can benefit as assistive technologies. However beyond Turo’s natural scope, the fact of the matter is the integration with ChatGPT is a shrewd, if unintentional move, to help make travel planning more accessible to people with disabilities. Even as a non-driver due to my low vision, planning travel is one of the least fun parts of what ostensibly is a vacation. It’s a lot to think about driving and airfare and lodging and meals. In Turo’s case, that someone could use everyday conversational verbiage to tell their computer in ChatGPT what their needs are can go a very long way in reducing travel prep anxiety. It’s not only alleviating cognitive load either; from a practical point of view, forcing ChatGPT to do the grunt work also means less searching. Less searching means less pointing and clicking and swiping in the interface, which ultimately means less eye strain and fatigue and less chance of motor conditions like carpal tunnel. All together, ChatGPT becomes not merely something that you can boss around and ask it to give you information. It becomes a bonafide assistive technology that saves you precious mental and physical energies simply by virtue of its very nature. These are not trivial benefits.
In other words, ChatGPT has the potential to work as designed in many more ways than one.
Feedback on the plugin has been positive thus far, according to Mangahas. The company is “thrilled” by the early results, with Mangahas saying the insight “signifies the multitude of potential outcomes for this integration, [as] AI has the ability to transform the travel industry and simplify the way consumers plan and book a vacation.” He added Turo has every intention of “leading the charge by continuing to experiment with different ways that it can augment and advance our platform.”
As for Turo’s future ambitions, Mangahas pointed to the past. He said the company would not have endured since 2009 when it launched unless it was steadfastly committed to furthering innovation in their segment of the industry. He added Turo’s business model has always adapted to conditions in the market in terms of trends and economic forces, saying the decision to join forces with OpenAI is but one of those adaptations. “Turo continues to make targeted investments in marketing initiatives, product features, and the overall business,” he said. “We hope to continue growing consistently and making major investments in personnel, geographic expansion, and AI to continue leading the industry as the world’s largest peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace.”
As mentioned, Turo’s plugin is currently available only to paid ChatGPT Plus subscribers. It will be coming to members in the free tier sometime “in the near future,” according to Mangahas.
