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How AI Is Changing Event Discovery, Booking

Nadeem Bakhsh, chief executive and co-founder of webook.com (Company handout)
Nadeem Bakhsh, chief executive and co-founder of webook.com (Company handout)
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How AI Is Changing Event Discovery, Booking

Nadeem Bakhsh, chief executive and co-founder of webook.com (Company handout)
Nadeem Bakhsh, chief executive and co-founder of webook.com (Company handout)

A night out can start with a simple question: “What should we do tonight?”

That is where traditional search can struggle. It works best when users already know the event, date, or location they want. Booking platforms are now using artificial intelligence to tackle the opposite problem: first understanding vague intent, then turning it into options that can actually be booked.

Nadeem Bakhsh, chief executive and co-founder of webook.com, says the platform’s AI booking agent was not built because existing search tools were failing. It was designed to add another layer of discovery for users who do not yet know exactly what they want.

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Bakhsh said search and filters remain effective when users have a clear target. Open-ended questions, however, require the system to understand context before it can surface the right option.

From keywords to intent

In its first version, the agent uses natural language processing in Arabic and English and can handle informal requests that include location, preferences, group type or booking criteria.

Users do not need to know an event’s name or phrase their request like a search query, Bakhsh said. They can simply ask for a family activity, a nearby experience or something available in the evening.

The system then interprets the request, identifies the relevant details and matches them with options in the platform’s live catalog.

If key information is missing, the agent is designed to ask for clarification rather than produce a generic list that may not fit the user’s needs.

That makes accuracy central to the experience. The more discovery shifts from explicit search to conversation, the greater the risk that a question will be misunderstood or misinterpreted.

When the agent gets it wrong

Bakhsh acknowledges that mistakes are part of using AI systems.

The agent, he said, “should not pretend to know.” If a request is unclear or incomplete, it should ask for more information rather than force an unreliable recommendation.

The official booking page remains the final authority on availability, prices, fees and event terms. If information changes or tickets sell out before a purchase is completed, the details shown in the official booking flow take precedence over anything said earlier in the conversation.

When the agent cannot verify information, Bakhsh said, it should direct the user to official event details or human support.

A correction from the user may also help improve the next response, but Bakhsh does not present that as a guarantee that the same mistake will not happen again.

Recommendation or advertising?

Trust becomes a commercial issue when the agent is not only finding events, but ranking and recommending them.

Bakhsh said the system is meant to match user intent with options that are genuinely available to book, not present paid advertising as personal advice.

Recommendations are based on criteria supplied by the user, including location, timing, group type and activity preference, as well as live availability.

Any paid or sponsored placement, he said, should be clearly labeled so users can distinguish an organic recommendation from commercial content.

“Trust depends on making that distinction clear,” Bakhsh said.

One journey, several channels

The experience becomes more complicated when the conversation starts outside the booking platform itself, on services such as X, Instagram or WhatsApp.

Bakhsh said the agent uses information users choose to provide, such as location, timing, group type, interests and booking criteria, to make suggestions more relevant.

Public interactions remain limited to discovery. Once greater privacy is required, the conversation moves to a private channel and then into webook.com’s secure booking environment.

Card details and other sensitive personal information should not be requested through public posts, comments or direct messages on social media, he said.

Personal data remains subject to the platform’s privacy policy and to legal and regulatory retention requirements.

Bakhsh also said data is not treated as freely transferable from one channel to another. Any personalization depends on the permissions granted by the user and the purpose for which the data was collected.

What webook.com builds — and what it does not

The agent is not built entirely with in-house technology.

Bakhsh said webook.com develops and operates the core product layer and orchestration system. That includes understanding booking intent, linking it to the catalog, applying product logic, generating recommendations and directing users into the secure booking flow.

External infrastructure is used when needed for language-model processing, cloud services and access to channels such as X, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Those providers supply infrastructure or distribution channels, Bakhsh said, but they do not own the event inventory, booking logic or customer journey.

The company does not disclose vendor architecture or security-sensitive implementation details.

Bakhsh also stressed that the agent remains in beta and can make mistakes. Users should verify event details and final booking information on the official page before completing a transaction.

Discovery ends where the transaction begins

One of the main safeguards in the system is the separation between conversation and payment.

The agent may respond to a general request in a public space, but when privacy becomes necessary, it moves the interaction into a private channel and then directs the user to an official, identity-linked booking flow.

It does not request card details or sensitive information through social media posts, comments, or direct messages.

Bakhsh said this structure helps limit the impact of prompt manipulation, impersonation, fraudulent accounts, and fake booking links.

The conversational layer can help users find an event, but it cannot bypass the inventory, account, pricing, or payment controls on the official platform.

The agent does not set the price

Once a user moves from discovery to purchase, the agent’s role stops at a clear boundary.

Options come from the live catalog, but the official booking page remains the authoritative transaction interface.

Before confirming, users see current availability, the final price, booking fees and event-specific terms, including cancellation and refund policies.

The agent cannot change those terms or guarantee that a ticket will still be available while a user waits.

Age restrictions and accessibility requirements are shown only when they appear in the official event details. If the information is unclear, the system is not supposed to guess.

AI, in other words, changes how users reach an option. It does not change the contractual terms or controls governing the purchase.

Bakhsh also links the agent to a broader framework called TruFan, while drawing a distinction between the two.

The AI agent operates at the start of the journey, turning natural-language requests into bookable options.

TruFan addresses a different stage: integrity and access to high-demand events, by helping identify genuine, verified fans and giving them priority.

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Technology

Under Fire over AI, Effective Altruism Wants to Tell Its Own Story

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
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Under Fire over AI, Effective Altruism Wants to Tell Its Own Story

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP

The effective altruism movement, which has close ties to the AI community and the companies leading the artificial intelligence boom, has drawn mainstream attention and accusations of cult-like behavior and alarmism.

The hard-to-define movement is still growing, and wants to better explain its values amid bitter criticism from the Trump administration and some powerful voices in Silicon Valley.

Its founding principle is to give money or time to major causes as effectively as possible, an intentionally dispassionate approach has at times been called out of touch, said AFP.

The New York Post called it a "wacky cult," the conservative Daily Caller dubbed it "The AI Doomsday Cartel," and a White House memo accused it of preferring the saving of "shrimp over families."

Once little known outside the tech world and some academic and political circles, effective altruism (EA) has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after a series of warnings about AI risks.

Those warnings were linked to EA. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and adviser to President Donald Trump, argued that organizations tied to EA are part of a "Doomer Industrial Complex" pushing for tougher AI regulation.

- 'Strange' ideas -

EA is deeply rooted in Silicon Valley and counts controlling AI's dangers among its priorities.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in EA's early days, although he now distances himself from the movement.

Anthropic president Daniela Amodei, Dario's sister, is married to Holden Karnofsky, an Anthropic employee and a leading EA proponent.

The movement has also influenced researchers and staff at other AI companies, including ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, particularly those working on AI safety.

The movement, which took shape about 15 years ago, is used to criticism.

Wealthy EA donors have often been accused of self-importance and of believing they alone know how best to give.

"Our ideas are just strange enough that people genuinely misinterpret them sometimes, and we can do a better job explaining how effective altruism approaches hard questions and tradeoffs," said Zachary Robinson, head of the Centre for Effective Altruism.

Robinson, whose organization supports the movement without directing it, sees the scrutiny since the summer as an opportunity to open up rather than retreat, because "people are curious to learn about us now."

After growing steadily until 2022, EA was badly damaged by the collapse of cryptocurrency platform FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, once the face of EA and later convicted of fraud.

After several difficult years, "We're on an up right now," Robinson said, pointing to attendance at the EA Global conference in New York in mid-October.

Like many at EA Global, Shanil Wijesinghe who works at a Canadian non-profit rejected the image of EA as monolithic. "It is a values-based movement and not an identity-based movement," he said.

"We're all trying to do the most good, with the resources we have," he said. Those values "can be interpreted differently, and I think we have to embrace those differences."

- No leader -

EA has no leader or spokesperson. Sjir Hoeijmakers, head of the charity platform Giving What We Can, said that is a good thing, even if it means "sometimes the story doesn't get told."

Still, "effective altruism is now a movement large enough that it's actually really influencing the world, and that's getting noticed," he said.

"I think the work that they're doing has been quite valuable," said Nadav Brandes, a genetics researcher also at EA Global, referring to AI safety.

"Without those pioneers... nobody would still today take this issue very seriously," he added.

Brandes said he was initially skeptical when AI became a major EA cause, joining climate change and animal welfare.

"It was even a little bit off-putting to me," he recalled. "I was totally wrong about it."

Robinson stressed, however, that EA is about more than AI.

"The cause that gets the most emphasis right now is AI safety, but I think it would be false to say EA is AI safety," he said.

"If you look at the money side of things, actually, it's been the case for many years that global health and development gets much more money than AI," he said.

Technology

Tech Firms Claw Back Some Losses after Midterms Rout, Eyes on Nvidia

Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
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Tech Firms Claw Back Some Losses after Midterms Rout, Eyes on Nvidia

Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File

Tech firms rose Monday to claw back some of last week's painful losses fueled by AI regulation worries, though traders were keeping a wary eye on a probe into Nvidia boss Jensen Huang amid claims of an affair with a Chinese spy.

Chipmakers and other companies linked to the artificial intelligence boom took a hammering in the days after Tuesday's US midterms saw Democrats sweep both houses of Congress in a rebuke to Donald Trump and his Republican party.

The results suggested voters were angry at the president's Iran war and tariffs, which have sent prices soaring, as well as a sharp kickback against the huge data center buildout that has taken place across the country in recent years.

That has led to speculation the new Congress will seek to wind in tech firms' construction drive, which could put thousands of jobs at risk.

The uncertainty comes with traders already nervous about when the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into the sector would actually see a profit.

After taking a lashing on Thursday, Wall Street enjoyed a little stability at the end of last week, and Asia -- which had suffered a hammering itself on Friday -- largely followed suit to start this week.

Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei -- which are heavily weighted with AI-linked tech giants -- led the advances.

The Japanese Nikkei 225 piled on more than three percent thanks to rallies in Kioxia, Tokyo Electron and Advantest, while SK hynix and Samsung piled on around three percent to push the South Korean Kospi sharply higher.

Taiwan's TSMC rocketed nearly six percent to drag the Taiex five percent higher.

There were also healthy gains in Hong Kong and Shanghai, though Sydney, Wellington and Manila edged down.

"Investors will be watching carefully this week to get a sense as to whether these gains are just short-covering, bargain hunting or the beginning of something more sustainable in nature," said Sally Auld at National Australia Bank.

"Fears around AI regulation, the outlook for (capital expenditure) and free cash flow have been the driver of risk reduction in recent weeks and these issues are not likely to be resolved with any conviction in the near term.

"Nonetheless, the valuation of many tech stocks now looks less expensive."

- Nvidia probe -

However, a little more uncertainty was injected into markets with news that Nvidia's board was launching an investigation into whether Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot following his admission that he was unfaithful to his wife.

The New York Times reported last month that US intelligence officials concluded a Chinese executive linked to a Singapore-based data center company called Megaspeed had been funneling information to Beijing.

The executive, Alice Huang -- also known as Huang Le, and no relation to 63-year-old Taiwanese-born Jensen -- developed a close relationship with the Nvidia boss, the Times said.

Nvidia is a global leader in producing chips used to train and run AI models and one of the world's most valuable companies, and last year became the first to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion.

Jensen Huang is a huge figure in the AI revolution and a close informal adviser to Trump, and the Times said the Nvidia boss's extra-marital relationship could have revealed insights into Trump's thinking around AI.

Technology analyst Dan Ives, at investment bank Yorkville Ives, said the crisis will at the very least spark multiple congressional inquiries and "create an overhang on the stock for a myriad of reasons".

"This will add risk to the stock as he is so important to the Nvidia story and strategy globally," Ives added. "This will also increase major scrutiny regarding selling chips to China, which remains a key battleground issue in DC."

Investors will be keeping tabs this week on the release of fresh US inflation data, after figures Friday showed the economy created far more jobs than expected in October.

The figures will key for the Federal Reserve in determining whether or not to hike interest rates when it meets next in December, with markets saying there is an 80 percent chance of a lift.

Technology

Pakistan-Built Robots Serve Taste of Future to Karachi Diners

This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
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Pakistan-Built Robots Serve Taste of Future to Karachi Diners

This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)

Wheeling its way between dining booths at a neon-lit restaurant in Pakistan's Karachi megacity, a robot waitress drops off a fresh pizza to an awaiting family.

While global buzz is growing around agile humanoids made in the United States, China and elsewhere, robotic staff are a rare sight in the South Asian country.

"Welcome to Sicilian. My name is Robia," the waitress says in an electronic voice, looking down at diners through blinking red LED eyes.

Robia and her colleague Jojo are the DIY creations of Pakistani engineer Syed Osama Aziz, who is bringing a sci-fi reboot to Karachi's storied dining scene.

They have spherical white heads and dark visors, similar to a motorcycle helmet, and sport black shawls around their neck in the style of a dupatta worn by women in the region.

Aziz, who also established The Sicilian restaurant, developed the machines using mostly locally manufactured parts, designing their circuit boards and programming them in his own lab.

"The equipment, the things needed to make robots, are not so easily available here, so we had to arrange them," he told AFP.

The duo were developed through his robotics company, Cobot, with help from friends and some electronic components imported from abroad.

In China and other East Asian countries especially, robots are an increasingly common sight, shuttling food to customers in chain restaurants and taking on other jobs from cleaning to greeting hotel guests.

But they remain a novelty in Pakistan, where Aziz's home-grown creations are attracting curious diners.

When they arrive at a table, the customers must either take the food off their serving tray themselves or wait for a human member of staff to assist them.

- Excited customers -

Aziz, whose workshop manufacturing the robots is located in Multan in Pakistan's central Punjab province, hopes to make his creations more sophisticated in the future.

"Our plans are to add camera-based processing and image-processing features," he said.

"That means the robot will also recognize you by looking at you, and it will remember what you ordered last time, and accordingly it will be able to give you better suggestions."

For now, the robots are proving a hit with families, who flock to the restaurant to watch the machines in action.

"The best thing about it is that it introduces itself," excited customer Ahmer Zameer told AFP, explaining the robot also "tells you what things you can order".

Children reach out to touch the robots while their parents snap photographs and selfies.

Young customer Sonia Dilosker said she was impressed by the androids' appearance and preferred their approach to serving customers, "because it is a machine and without any emotions".

Restaurant staff say the novelty has brought a surge in customers -- some travelling from across the sprawling port city to meet the robots.

"Our business has grown. People are coming from far away for this. They have seen a robot for the first time here," staff member Hellen told AFP.

"People are excited to see this."