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According to every product demo over the past four years, planning a trip is a killer use case for AI. Just tell it where you’re going, all set, and the chatbot/agent/other buzzword will comprehensively research your travel options, read up on all the fun things to do, check out all the local hotspots, and present you with a complete itinerary. So far, I’ve found that this only works in the most general ways: if you want to do the six most obvious things in any city on planet Earth, the AI has got you covered, but that’s as far as it can go.
I had a completely different experience using Spark, Google’s new always-on AI agent. Spark is Something very ambitious: Google aims to be the interface through which you can use external applications, and even power your computer over time. (“OpenClaw with better internet access” is a not-so-wrong way to describe it.) Spark is currently rolling out for Google’s $99-per-month AI Ultra plan, but Google let me try it early. I’ve tested a few simple, action-oriented things, like having Spark browse my Gmail inbox and suggest a bunch of things I should unsubscribe from and having it comb through my Google Docs looking for old tasks I haven’t finished yet. Either way, he did a good job, even creating a nicely organized document for me with a bunch of links to quickly unsubscribe from various marketing emails.
Spark was then given a simple task to plan the flight. “I will be in Hershey, Pennsylvania with my wife, child, and dog the weekend of July 18. Can you make a plan for the entire weekend, including places to stay, eat, things to do, and everything else?” I left out some notable details, like the concert tickets I had for that Saturday night, but I decided to start with the six most obvious things to do in Hershey and go from there.
A few minutes later, Spark called me again. “I’ve created a comprehensive, family-friendly, dog-friendly weekend itinerary for your trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania, from Friday, July 17 to Sunday, July 19, 2026.” She shared a link to a Google Doc she made for me, as well as thousands of words of her shockingly detailed and helpful itinerary.
First, I showed driving directions from my home, an address that Google of course knew but I didn’t. It included some hotel options, including pet fees, and some dog-friendly activities that Frida might like. I never told Google that my dog’s name was Frieda; My only guess is that Spark found it through emails from my vet.
Spark also casually pointed out that my son Louis will get into Hersheypark for free, since he’s not even a year old yet, but since Arthur is three, he’ll need a ticket. I don’t know if Spark was guessing what time Louis went to sleep in the afternoon, or if he somehow knew, but it was correct to schedule his nap at 1:30 p.m.
Spark’s entire itinerary was filled with details like this. It included my wife’s name, keeping in mind that she doesn’t like to eat onions or green onions. It included a Thomas Rhett and Niall Horan concert on Saturday night, and it was assumed based on Ticketmaster’s confirmation in my email, it indicated that parking was included in the tickets we purchased. When I got to the part where he mentioned getting a babysitter that night, I remembered that my parents were coming just for that, so I added a note to the conversation.
“This is a great update!” Spark responded, happily calling my parents by name, and switching her recommendations from a hotel to an Airbnb. When I had Spark put all the information into a Google Doc and share it with Anna, I found my wife’s email, attached the document, wrote a note that sounded like we were co-workers instead of a couple, and sent it with me.
The only time Spark let me down was when I asked them to book an Airbnb. This prompted me to let Gemini interact with websites on my behalf, I switched to Airbnb, and it seemed to get blocked immediately. “Due to Airbnb’s security and authentication policies, I am unable to log in, handle payment, or complete reservations directly on your behalf.” Instead it showed some relevant places with availability on the appropriate days, and reminded me of the information I needed to book.
On the one hand, this is one of the most impressive AI experiences I’ve ever had. Google’s AI prowess, combined with the vast amount of data it has about me through Google’s Personal Intelligence feature, has produced a personalized, useful itinerary that’s perfectly suited to my needs and those of my family. She put together an itinerary, and presented it to me, the way any real human assistant would have done – with lots of details specific to our situation, with names of people who mattered to us, and with facilities for all of our specific needs. Every time I read the itinerary, I am struck by another detail of it; I think we will follow it almost exactly.
On the other hand, I can’t shake the deep, creepy feeling I get from the whole thing. What Spark did seems kind of magical and very invasive. It’s strange that Spark would casually tell me my kids’ names and ages, remind me that it knows where I live, and find out information I know for a fact that I never volunteered for Google. Intellectually, I know that Google knows an incredible amount about me—add in my emails, my calendar, my photos, and my search history, and it makes me pretty relatable. But seeing Spark treat all this data not as something to be protected, but as something to be extracted, even if ostensibly for my own benefit, is bad.
This is the trade we are all being asked to make now. There is a direct relationship between how much you are willing to share with an AI system and how useful that system is. google in Such a strong position Precisely because it already contains all this information, while OpenAI, Anthropic, and the rest are desperately trying to figure out how to put it together. The AI tools they promise us are ones that know us intimately, that can take actions on our behalf, and that can make decisions without needing our presence. None of this works unless we fully open ourselves to the machine. So this is what we are asked, even forced, to do.
You know the expression “If you don’t pay for it, you’re the product”? Artificial intelligence takes this a step further. We actually are We are Pay for it. We—our correspondence, our photographs, our very lives—represent raw material and finished product, everything constantly being extracted, sorted, and returned to us in new ways. Some of them may be unbelievable. All of them will require this trade. I think I’ll have a great weekend in Hershey this summer, but I won’t shake the feeling of being watched. Presumably for my own benefit.
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