While researching the route taken by José Saramago in year 1981 during his visit to the region of Tomar, I searched through Google for “Ilha do Lombo” and was provided with a resumé by AI which included this description:
“Hotel Estalagem Ilha Do Lombo:
Este hotel oferece conforto com quartos modernos, um restaurante com pratos portugueses e europeus, e um bar com cocktails.
Infraestruturas de Lazer:
Para relaxar, o hotel conta com um spa, piscina e uma área de ginásio”
There followed links to YouTube and various sites of tourism which showed photographs of guests enjoying the aforementioned facilities. One of these provided a form for the booking of immediate vacancies for rooms and their daily prices.
However, a continuation of the Google search pages revealed the sad history of the estalagem from the early 1990s when the owners had offered the property for sale without revealing that one half of the rooms had been built clandestinely and that the only sanitation consisted of a septic tank located less than 35 meters from the high-water level.
Later articles published in the local press included photographs of untreated sewage floating in the “pristine waters” of the Albufeira de Castelo do Bode between the island and its landside reception bar.
This publicity eventually pressured the Ministry of the Environment into issuing a closure order. Since the turn of the century, it has been used as a private residence although the Austrian owner has made several unsuccessful proposals to the Tomar Town Hall for a return to use for commercial purposes.
I had been under the impression that the advanced use of AI was to make searches at immense speed of data held on the internet in order to present factual summaries of given subjects.
This example shows that I was wrong. AI will deliver what is required of it by the “Big Tech” masters of the cyber-universe for all manner of purposes without any guarantee of impartiality or accuracy.
Beware!
