Your vacation was ruined, and the company apologized — with a heartfelt note written by ChatGPT

Responding to angry customers is one of the hardest parts of her job, Natasha said.

Finding the right words, conveying the appropriate level of contrition — especially when the hotel isn't at fault (read: rain complaints) — is a tedious and time-consuming process, said the director of a five-star resort, who asked that CNBC not use her real name to protect the resort's name.

But now she has a secret weapon: generative AI.

Natasha pastes a traveler's complaint into ChatGPT and asks the chatbot to write a response.

She said a task that would easily take her an hour is done "in two seconds."

For all its faults, ChatGPT "does a pretty good job" responding to customer complaints, Natasha said.

"One [response] was much better than what I would have done," she said. But "it has to be checked ...you have to read through it."

Responses tend to be "schmaltzy" and adjective-laden, she said. Still, they "hit the points of like 'We're sorry, we wish we could have done something, we'll do better' kind of thing."

They also address every complaint mentioned by a traveler.

"It's hard to write these letters; you have to go through line-by-line," she said. "You wouldn't be doing the person justice, if you didn't respond to everything on the list … the AI does this really well."

But best of all, artificial intelligence isn't defensive like humans, said Natasha.   

"The AI takes all the emotion out of it. Maybe the people were ass-----," she said. "It doesn't care."

Responding to negative online reviews is even harder, said Natasha, since they are so public.

Plus, research shows that companies that don't respond to online reviews — even positive ones — can harm their brand's reputation.

In a ranking of U.S. hotel chains by their "online reputations," the