AI, in plain words

• It read a great deal and learned the patterns

  It was shown an enormous amount of writing and learned which words tend to follow which.

• So it is brilliant with words

  Rewriting, shortening, translating, softening a reply, turning notes into a paragraph. Seconds, and done well.

• And it does not know anything

  Not what you charge, when you open, or whether your boat sailed. When it does not know, it does not stop.

• So it is a helper, not a manager

  A very fast assistant on their first day. Quick, willing, good at words, no idea which facts are true. You check.

The four words people use

• AI assistant, chatbot, large language model. Three names for the same thing here. A box you type into that types back.
• A prompt. Just what you typed. No special language. Plain English works, and so does plain Greek.
• A hallucination. When it makes something up. Not rare, and not a bug you can switch off. It is the same trick working badly.
• An answer engine. What search is turning into. ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews assemble an answer instead of listing links, and most people never click a source.

All five are free, work on a phone, and need no card and no contract

1. Answer messages faster

• Time 15 min
• When All year

Not writing for you. Getting a good reply out of your pocket in the ninety seconds between tables.

1. Tell it who you are

   One line. "I run a family taverna in Skiathos Town, I answer in English and Greek, I am friendly and short."

2. Paste the message in

   Then add: draft a reply.

3. Delete anything you did not tell it

   Especially numbers.

4. Add the real facts yourself

   The price, the time, the table you actually have.

5. Send it by hand

   From your own account, every time.

2. Put your menu in three languages

• Time 1 hour
• When Nov to Mar

A photograph of a menu cannot be read by a search engine or an assistant. The same menu typed out can be quoted, translated and recommended.

1. Type it out once

   In the language you write best. Dish name, one short line, the price.

2. Ask for three languages

   English, Greek, and whichever you hear most at your tables.

3. Leave the dish names alone

   Say: keep the Greek names as they are and put the explanation underneath.

4. Check every price by eye

   Against your own list. Do not skim this step.

5. Have a real speaker read it

   One person per language, before it goes on a board or a website.

3. Reply to your reviews

• Time 20 min
• When Weekly

An unanswered bad review is read by everyone who comes after it. A calm reply underneath changes what they take away.

1. Paste the review in

   Ask for a short, calm, polite reply from the owner. No more than four sentences.

2. Tell it what is true

   If the complaint is fair, say so. If it is not, say what happened and ask it to be polite about it.

3. Cut the apology down

   One sorry is enough. It will give you three.

4. Put one real detail back

   In your own words. A name, a dish, the evening it was.

5. Post it yourself

   And answer the good ones too. Those are quicker.

4. Make a week of social posts

• Time 1 hour
• When Weekly

Sit down once, come away with seven. This is the job it is best at, because nothing in it is a fact you have to defend.

1. Pick seven photographs first

   Real ones, from your phone. The pictures decide the posts.

2. Describe each in a few words

   Grilled fish, corner table, sunset, Tuesday.

3. Ask for seven captions

   Short, no hashtags, no exclamation marks, in the voice of a family that has run this place for years.

4. Throw two away

   Two will sound like an advert. Ask again for those.

5. Save them as drafts

   Then post one a day yourself.

5. Turn a photograph into a usable picture

• Time 10 min
• When Nov to Mar

Most business photographs on this island are good pictures taken at the wrong moment. Straightening and lightening one takes a few minutes.

1. Start with a real photograph

   The food, the room, the view, and the outside of the building so people can find the door.

2. Use the editor on your phone first

   Straighten, crop, lift the shadows. That alone fixes most of them.

3. Then ask the assistant

   Brighter and clearer, without changing anything in it.

4. Compare the two side by side

   Look for anything that has moved, appeared or vanished.

5. Ask for the sizes you need

   A square for social, a wide one for a listing. Keep the original untouched.

• Never a price

  It will invent a number that looks about right, and a wrong price is not a small mistake to the person paying it.

  Price and value is the largest single group of things this guide warned visitors about, across 262 warnings on 130 venues. Do not hand that job to something that guesses.

• Never your hours

  Half the island already reads as open in January. An assistant asked what is open in Skiathos in May reads those dates literally, exactly like a visitor standing outside your door.

  Your season dates come out of your own head, typed by you, onto your own listing.

• Never a promise

  A booking, a table time, a pick-up, a sailing, a room with a view, a dish that is on tonight.

  If a person is going to change their evening because of the sentence, a person writes or reads that sentence first.

Four habits that cover the rest

• It never sends on its own. It drafts, you read, you send. The moment it can send by itself, every mistake above goes straight to a customer with your name on it.
• It never touches the allergen list. Translation is the job it is best at, and this is the one place that is not good enough. A person who speaks the language reads it every time.
• Keep one true copy. One list of prices, one set of dates, in one place, written by you. Everything it produces is checked against that, not against what it remembers.
• If it will not matter, let it go. A caption slightly duller than yours costs nothing. Spend your checking on prices, dates and promises.