It might be ironic but it's not surprising that one of the best resources helping people get off screens and outside is an app. Specifically, AllTrails, an award-winning app driving outdoor discovery with access to over 420,000 trails paired with GPS maps and crowd sourced (and vetted) reviews, photos, and more. Making all that trail data an even better backcountry resource is the recent rollout of an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot called AllTrails GPT—plus an updated location sharing feature called Live Share.
On paper (or, let's be real, screens) AllTrails GPT is an AI chatbot accessible via OpenAI's new GPT Store. But in practice, it's a digital dirtbag guru, an all-knowing local that, when asked for hyper-specific trail recs—"I want to see a waterfall within an hour from my home but I don't want to hike more than three miles and I'm going to bring my dog—can tell you exactly where to go.” Ask for views, ask for recent trail conditions, ask what kind of hiking shoes you should wear; AllTrails GPT can tell you.