Technology has always been part of how we work. From the first field guides and maps to radios, GPS, smartphones and digital learning, the tools available to guides and the industry have continued to evolve. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is simply the next part of that conversation.
It is also a conversation that comes with a lot of questions. What does AI mean for guiding? Can we trust the information it provides? How can it be used responsibly? And perhaps most importantly, what does it mean for the people who teach, assess, mentor and employ professional guides? At FGASA, we believe these are important questions to ask now — not because we have all the answers, but because technology is already changing the way people access information, learn and work.
Our starting point is quite simple: How can we use technology to help good people do their jobs better? That is a very different conversation from asking how technology might replace people.
Keeping the professional at the centre
Guiding is, and will remain, a very human profession. A professional guide does far more than provide information. A guide reads the environment, observes animal behaviour, manages risk, understands guests, makes decisions, interprets what is happening and creates a meaningful connection between people and the places they are visiting. Much of this comes with experience.
AI can give you information about an elephant. It cannot stand next to you when you are watching a herd and help you decide whether the situation is changing, whether you should move on, or how best to interpret nature for your guests. That is the role of the professional.
The same applies to our CPD facilitators, mentors and assessors. Their value is not simply in the information they deliver or the processes they follow. It is in their experience, their ability to mentor, observe, question, guide and make professional judgements. Technology can support that work. It should not replace it. In fact, if used properly, one of the real opportunities may be to reduce some of the repetitive work around our profession, allowing people to spend more time doing the things that require human knowledge, experience and interaction.
So, where can AI help?
For a guide, the opportunities are often quite practical. AI can be used as a learning and preparation tool. A guide could use it to explore a topic before a safari, develop questions to test their own knowledge, simplify a complicated ecological concept or look at different ways of explaining a conservation issue to guests.
It could help with CPD and ongoing learning, assist with organising information or identify areas where a guide may want to do further research. It can also be useful when preparing for different types of guests. A family with young children may require a very different approach to a group of experienced naturalists. AI can help generate ideas — but it is still the guide who decides what is appropriate, accurate and relevant.
This distinction is important. AI can assist with preparation. It cannot take responsibility for the experience.
And we should never forget that AI can be wrong. It can produce an answer that sounds authoritative but is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date. For a professional guide, that means verification remains essential. Information should be checked against reliable sources, particularly where accuracy matters. The technology may provide the starting point. The professional remains responsible for what ultimately reaches the guest.
Supporting those who support the profession
There are opportunities beyond the guide as well. Facilitators and trainers could use AI to help prepare learning material, develop discussion questions, create revision exercises or find different ways to explain a difficult concept. Assessors may eventually find technology useful in areas such as preparation, organisation and administration. But there should be no confusion about where responsibility lies. Assessment decisions, observation of competence and professional judgement remain the responsibility of the assessor.
The same applies to training providers and employers. Technology may help organisations make their knowledge and information easier to access, support onboarding, assist with workplace learning, improve communication and support CPD.
For FGASA, this is an important part of the bigger picture. We are not simply looking at AI as another piece of technology. We are exploring how technology can help us become more effective in the way we support our members, our professional standards and the wider guiding ecosystem.
An international conversation
FGASA is not exploring these questions in isolation. Through our involvement with the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (WFTGA), we are participating in international discussions around technology, digital literacy and AI in guiding.
One of the initiatives emerging from this work is the development of an AI Toolkit for Guides. The intention is to create something practical that guides can use to better understand AI, where it can add value, how to use it responsibly and where caution is required. This is still a work in progress, and that is important to acknowledge. We are learning as we go, and the guiding profession should have a voice in shaping how these tools are developed and used.
One of the ideas coming through strongly in the international conversation is one that captures this particularly well: AI can provide information. The guide provides the meaning. That distinction matters.
A few principles to keep in mind
As we start exploring this space, there are a few principles that should guide us. AI can be confident and still be wrong, so information should always be checked. We also need to think carefully about what personal, guest, employer or organisational information we enter into an AI system. Technology can assist, but the professional remains responsible, and there is a big difference between using AI to help you learn and using it to create the impression that you know something you don’t.
We also need to keep the human connection. A safari is not simply about information. It is about experience, interpretation, connection and the relationship between the guide and the guest. And perhaps most importantly, we need to use these tools responsibly. The professional standards, ethics and integrity that apply to guiding do not change simply because we are using a new tool.
Start small
For anyone who has not experimented with AI before, there is no need to start with anything complicated. Try asking it to explain an ecological concept in simple terms so that you can understand it better. Ask it to create five questions to test your knowledge of a particular species, or suggest different ways of explaining a conservation topic to a family with children.
Then do what a professional guide should always do: question it, check it and apply your own knowledge. That is where the real value lies.
Looking ahead
We don’t need to have all the answers today. What we do need to do is understand what is changing, ask the right questions and make sure that the technology we choose to use strengthens rather than diminishes professional guiding.
For FGASA, this is the beginning of a conversation. We will continue exploring how technology can support professional guides, facilitators, assessors, training providers and employers — whether that is through learning, CPD, access to information, administration or simply making some of the processes around our profession more effective.
But as we do so, the fundamentals remain unchanged: professional standards, human expertise, ethical practice, good judgement and, ultimately, the quality of the experience we provide to our guests.
The toolkit may be growing.
But the professional guide remains at the centre of it.