It is 11 p.m. in a city your assignee barely knows. Anxiety has set in and your HR team is unreachable. They are asking AI, and what comes back may sound convincing, but it’s completely wrong.
When assignees arrive unprepared, it rarely shows up on day one. It is usually by month three when the family is struggling, expectations have not been met, and the assignment quietly falls apart.
Industry research puts the cost of a failed assignment between $250,000 and $1 million. Most failures are not about job performance. They are about adjustment that depends a great deal on the quality of information an employee had before moving.
AI presents information in an authoritative tone whether it is current, outdated, or simply wrong. It does not know what it does not know. That is not a flaw you can work around. It is how the technology works.
When AI scrapes destination content from the web, it increasingly learns from other AI-generated content. Every time it does, critical information on mental health resources, LGBTQ safety, sustainability, local transportation, and everyday wellness becomes a little less accurate. There is no correction process, and no one accountable for getting it right.
Assignees make a lot of decisions when moving abroad, and a decision based on inaccurate information about safety, mental health access, or cultural norms, is not just a personal problem. It is a corporate liability. Continuously updated, human-verified content is how you close that gap.
A 2025 AXA Global Healthcare report found that nearly three quarters of expats aged 18 to 34 experience moderate to severe anxiety or depression. That same group is four times more likely to turn to AI for support than older colleagues. Research shows AI chatbots tend to validate users rather than challenge them. Experts have documented cases where that makes a mental health crisis worse, not better.
The most vulnerable people in your program are relying most heavily on AI, the least reliable tool available for destination information.
Your mobility platforms are only as good as the data feeding them. If an assignee’s pre-departure information points them to mental health resources that no longer exist or outdated housing details, the platform has failed them regardless of how sophisticated it is. Unverified information leads to uninformed decisions, and uninformed decisions put assignments at risk.
Global Mobility managers care deeply about the people they send on assignment. Whether your program currently includes destination information or not, now is the right time to ask if your assignees have what they truly need to thrive in their new home.
More than 20,000 global mobility professionals and assignees access Living Abroad’s International Relocation Center annually for accurate, human-researched destination information that supports confident decisions abroad.
The employees and families you relocated are counting on you to give them the best.
