Digital tourism interpretation content quality: A comparison between AI-generated content and professional-generated content

The emerging digital tourism interpretations give rise to a novel intermediary for delivering interpretation in the form of professional-generated content (PGC) or artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC). The pressing inquiry is whether artificial intelligence can surpass professional interpreters in terms of interpretation content quality, and if so, which specific dimensions it excels in. This study used a mixed-method approach encompassing grounded theory and content analysis. Grounded research, based on a pioneering digital tourism interpretation platform in China, unveiled three dimensions of content quality in digital tourism interpretation: informativeness, emotional appeal, and empathy. Furthermore, content analysis and ANOVA indicated that AIGC demonstrates comparatively lower levels of content quality than PGC across all three dimensions. These conclusions affirm that, regarding interpretation content quality, AI cannot replace human professional interpreters; however, considering AI's superior efficiency in generating interpretation content, the potential for human-machine collaboration in digital tourism interpretations is suggested.