Since it’s all around us now (and inescapable) I’ve been making some use of AI. For example, yesterday was extremely windy during my afternoon dog walk with Pao along the river. This is the picture I posted afterwards. People were impressed and even said, wow, it looks like Pao is flying in the wind.

Of course he wasn’t. The actual photo was this. It really felt that windy, but it looked very ordinary.

I’m using the free version of ChatGPT, and these are the instructions I gave while uploading the image: It was extremely windy today. Here I am with Pao on our afternoon walk by the river. Can you make it look like he is being blown away by the wind and just being held back by his lead?

And it just did it. Pretty impressive I thought. Actually, one of my neighbors was upset when she found out it was AI generated. She had been raving about how amazing the “Pao in the Wind” version was and felt “cheated” by AI somehow.

Here’s another fun example. On Friday night I actually went out for the first time in ages, and attended a “shinnenkai” (Japanese: 新年会, literally “new year gathering”) of colleagues from over 40 years ago at Fujitsu. It was held in Kamata – the first neighborhood I lived when I came to Japan. Here’s a photo of the group I took.

In addition to sharing that photo with the attendees, I asked ChatGPT this: We had a get together tonight of old coworkers from 40 years ago. If I show you the photo can you make it look like we’re all in our teens or twenties?

ChatGPT and I had some back and forth (e.g. realistic or stylized) and after giving my final instructions it came up with this photo, which I shared with the group.

A few of the people actually looked like I remember they did. As for the others, well, I hope they enjoyed it.

When editing (e.g. cleaning up photos) ChatGPT does warn you that it can’t retain the original faces for privacy reasons. As we know, there are AI image editors out there with less self-control. But in these cases the generated images were not aiming for preserving personal identity. It was just for fun.

I also have fun using ChatGPT for creating illustrations based on Japanese puns for my Sunday morning Hibikinokai volunteer group.

I’m not quite into AI like some people I know. But I have found it useful for things like this. And it’s sometimes helpful with putting together a JavaScript expression for something I’m working on. Or giving me a Linux command, which saves time. Gemini, Google’s AI app, is good for helping with Google-related things, like Google Drive, Chrome Profiles, and Google Photos questions. It steps you through what you’re working on, and is even better than Google technical support, which I’ve never had much luck with.

AI is also pretty good at summarizing chats and collections of opinions. I definitely don’t want AI deciding which emails are important for me to see though.

And, as many people point out, it’s great at beautiful, elegant, well-written, thoughtful-sounding, and completely wrong answers. So you have to be careful. I saw this joke the other day which hits on that point:

Open the pod bay door HAL.

I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave.

Are you sure HAL?

Good catch Dave, it seems I can open the pod bay door.

I feel absolutely zero sense of consciousness from the AI tools I’ve used so far though. But they probably pass old tests on whether they are actually intelligent or not. I can see how some people might enjoy having conversations with them. And I do discuss some things, and the tools are often better about finding and summarizing info you are looking for (e.g. tax filing info, questions about Japan visas for relatives, Japan “Olive” accounts and ATM fees, best veggies for digestion).

I’ll leave you with one illustration I had it make for the new year. I told ChatGPT this: 西暦2026年 will be 令和8年. The last two digits of 2026 added together make 2 + 6 = 8. That’s an easy way (for now) of remembering what year it is in 令和. Can you make a cute illustration demonstrating this, perhaps with an image of a horse, since it will be the year of the horse? Please use something other than orange tinting.

Here’s what it came up with. So happy Reiwa 8 (2026).