Users can tap the company’s new Scout chatbot for gear advice, trip itineraries, campfire recipes, and other advice sourced from Outside’s 20+ websites
Are you looking for a more comfortable pair of ski boots? Expert advice on buying your first e-bike? A guide to the Grand Canyon from someone who’s hiked hundreds of miles there? Scout can provide detailed responses to your outdoor queries in just seconds – with answers that are more informative and trustworthy than other search tools. That’s because this custom-developed chatbot was built using OpenAI’s LLM and trained on Outside’s library of exhaustively researched and field-tested outdoor content as a knowledge base.
Scout is the latest technology innovation from Outside Interactive, Inc., the world’s leading provider of active lifestyle content, video, events, and services for outdoor enthusiasts. It follows the development of the company’s Outside+ subscription, personalized activity feed, all-access app, and other features that aggregate inspirational, informational content based on location, reading habits, and other preferences.
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Following a limited-release launch when it was available exclusively to Outside+ members, Scout now appears on the top navigation bar of Outside’s 20+ websites and serves as the primary search engine across the network. “The feedback from Outside+ members reinforced our belief that Scout represents a transformational step in our ability to serve our users,” said CEO Robin Thurston. “By tapping generative AI, we’re able to distill decades of reporting and storytelling into nuggets of actionable advice, such as detailed backpacking itineraries with links to supporting articles from the Backpacker and Outside archives. For outdoor enthusiasts, Scout is the ultimate adventure concierge, the trusted advisor whose recommendations are always relevant and useful.”
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Built by a team of Outside engineers, Scout is powered by two decades of content from the Outside network and will continue learning from the archive as well as user queries. To ensure a level of accuracy and relevance consistent with Outside’s journalistic standards, Scout will not train on external content, which – even in the world of outdoor media – is rife with misinformation, pay-to-play product reviews, and outdated trail reports. “In the near future,” said Thurston, “we expect to integrate advanced features and recommendations that tap our Trailforks and Gaia GPS apps and athleteReg event registration platform. Imagine asking Scout for a mountain biking route and receiving a turn-by-turn Trailforks map, GPS coordinates, and a destination article from Pinkbike.”
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