This year (2024) the Greek Ministry of Tourism in collaboration with the Ministry of Digital Governance created “mAiGreece,” the digital artificial intelligence assistant to help visitors with some basic needs and questions.
The application offers extensive functionality and information, ensuring better service and immediate access to critical information for visitors.
With what kind of topics can the mAIGreece application help me with?
The interface is a chat interface where you can ask questions that an AI will answer.
mAiGreece can provide answers regarding:
- Hospitals throughout Greece.
- Health Centers across the country.
- Embassies and Consulates of foreign countries in Greece.
- Police Stations across the country.
- Blue Flag Beaches.
- Content from visitgreece.gr.
- Consolidated Frequently Asked Questions.
- Museums throughout Greece.
In what languages is mAIGreece available?
The mAIGreece application is available in 31 languages, including English, Bulgarian, French, German, Danish, Greek, Estonian, Irish, Spanish, Italian, Croatian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Czech, Finnish, Albanian, as well as Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Korean.
Once you have downloaded the application, you can select your preferred language in the Profile>Languages section.
Does the mAIGreece application know my location?
Yes, the mAIGreece application knows your location, and you can ask it questions such as “museums near me” or “hospitals near me.” If you wish to turn off the geolocation option, go to the application’s Settings and make the selection you wish.
Can the mAIGreece application be used in an emergency?
The mAIGreece application includes the capability to send an SMS to the operations center of the Ministry of Civil Protection via the 112 button, sending the sender’s geographic location for immediate assistance.
What you should note:
1. It does not need the user’s personal information to provide answers.
2. You are not talking to a person but to an AI application. The application is still in test-phase beta mode, so it may not always be 100% accurate.
3. The users’ questions help train and improve the digital assistant to provide better services.
The Pros and Cons
The Pros
- The application provides the basic information requested in a detailed manner, along with links to relevant websites or Google Maps for directions.
- The app’s geolocation feature helps make it more specific to your needs at a specific as the information provided is more targeted. In the next section, you will find an example of how this feature can be useful.
The Cons
- As the app is still in beta mode, it lacks nuance. Here is an example – there are definition differences between a hospital, a health center, and a private clinic. Of course, during an emergency, you really don’t care about the subtle differences in terminology, and you are more likely to ask for a hospital. If you ask for “Hospital in Chania,” the generated answer will be the General Public Hospital of Chania. Now, in the case of Chania, it is the city name and the prefecture, so that means you can be anywhere. The app will provide additional information if you ask more specific questions. For example, “ Additional hospitals in Chania” will continue with a selection of health centers that are more locational and spread around the prefecture. Private clinic information is still excluded at this point, and you may need to specify and ask again. In the case of an emergency when a hospital is required, it may be challenging to think of all the nuances and variations- in such cases, for example, asking for “ hospitals and health centers near me” might be more helpful to avoid having to clarify and become overly specific. This is where the geolocational features of the mAIGreece application might come in handy.
- There is no conversation history, and each chat expires pretty quickly, at which point you need to start a new conversation.
- The links take you to the Greek language homepage by default.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a great tool and initiative to help visitors with the basic information they need to find their way around, and of course as let’s not forget that the application is still in a test phase and will improve over time because, as we know AI are learning models.
You can download the application here:
Apple Store here and Google Play Store here.
