How we research and narrate
Every Gingerguide story is written by people from primary sources, checked claim by claim with a written evidence trail, transcreated into six languages, and then read aloud by a lifelike AI voice. This page explains each step, what we deliberately do not do, and how to tell us when something is wrong.
What the catalog is
Gingerguide covers 100+ European cities in 17 countries, with 2,000+ narrated sights. Each sight has a short description, a longer researched story of two to three minutes when spoken, a fact, a photo, coordinates, a category and a suggested visit time. The same text exists in English, Spanish, French, German, Turkish and Chinese. The website shows the descriptions and facts; the full stories play in the app.
How a city is chosen and a sight list is built
A city enters the catalog when we can cover it properly: enough sights to make a real walk, usually between twelve and fifty, ordered as a route through the historic centre. We include the famous landmarks and the places a good local guide would add, such as a market, a viewpoint or a street known for one food. We do not include a place we could not verify.
How each story is researched
Research comes before writing. For each sight we collect sources first and write from them: the site's official website or the institution that runs it, UNESCO and national heritage records where they apply, city tourism boards, encyclopaedias and reference works, and academic or museum publications for dates, dimensions and attributions. Wikipedia is a starting point for orientation and for finding primary sources, not the source of record.
Every factual claim in a story is logged in a per-city evidence file with the claim, the source it rests on, the date it was checked and, where a figure carries a range or a dispute, a note on how the story words it. A surprising fact is held to the highest standard, because it is the one most likely to be repeated. Where the sources disagree, the story says so or uses the more cautious figure; where we could not verify a popular anecdote, we leave it out or label it as a legend.
How the six languages are made
Stories are written in English and then transcreated, not machine-translated, into the other five languages, so idioms, place names and register fit each language (informal address in German and Turkish, for example). Names of places follow the usage of each language's own reference works. A parity check confirms that every sight carries all six languages before a city is published.
The narration is an AI voice
The voices you hear are text-to-speech, produced from our written scripts by lifelike AI voice models. We say so everywhere, in the app and on this site, because it is true and because it is what makes six languages for every sight possible. The words are ours and were checked by people; the voice is synthetic. If a human narrator matters more to you than coverage and language, our own comparison pages say which apps to look at instead.
The AI guide
The in-app AI guide answers free-form questions about a place. It is a language model given our researched text about the sight and the city as context, and it is told to say when it does not know. It is a companion for follow-up questions, not a substitute for the checked story, and it can be wrong; we ask you to treat its answers as you would a knowledgeable stranger's.
Photos
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Each photo is checked to show the actual place, and every page credits the file so you can see its author and licence. We do not use AI-generated images of real places.
What we do not do
- We do not publish a sight we could not verify from at least one reliable source.
- We do not take payment from any site, museum, restaurant or tour operator for inclusion or wording.
- We do not use affiliate links on comparison pages, and we disclose on every one that we make Gingerguide.
- We do not generate stories with a language model and publish them unchecked.
- We do not describe our narration as a human voice.
Corrections
If you find an error in any story, description, fact, photo or comparison, write to [email protected] with the city, the sight and what is wrong. We check it against the sources, fix the text in all six languages, regenerate the narration, and update the "Updated" date shown on the page. Reported errors in the app are also fixed in the next release.
Who is responsible
Editorial responsibility for the catalog rests with the Gingerguide team at Gingertech, the company that makes the app. See About Gingerguide.