Every now and then, technology takes a big leap and we’re mesmerized.

During my expanded lifetime, I’ve seen music go from 78s to albums and 45s, to cassettes and 8-tracks, to compact disks and then digital files. Each upgrade taking us to a new level.

I could say the same about so many other things, especially computers. I still remember taking the big plunge and plopping down just under $2,000 for a monochrome screen and a PC that worked on DOS. It was like I was living in the future. Today, the phone I carry around could do laps around that clunky antique.

And now, here comes AI–artificial intelligence.

Oh, it’s been around. Seems like every day, there’s a new article about it, or how Microsoft AI Chatbot “wished it was a human” and so on. To me, this is exciting stuff. To my wife, it’s just the Will Smith movie, “I, Robot” becoming a reality. (which, knowing what I know now, Will could have controlled the situation so much better if he just slapped that bad ‘bot)

Here’s where we take off.

Artificial Intelligence is waiting right now to help you.

There’s a website called Open AI (https://labs.openai.com) where you can utilize A.I. in a couple of ways. For writing, it’s called ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/chat) Pick a topic, any topic–for example, “Suggest a few names for a horse” and, in seconds, this pops up.

1. Stormy 2. Maverick 3. Apollo 4. Shadow 5. Blaze

6. Thunder 7. Spirit 8. Diamond 9. Prince 10. Duchess

Yeah, that’s just like Google, right? No, this monster thinks. Maybe have it write a paper on the benefits of an annuity as part of your financial picture.

And off it goes:

Oh, it’s not done. It will keep going until it has told you everything it knows until you hit that ‘stop generating’ button at the bottom. I hit it when it got to this point.

Otherwise, it would still be going.

What’s wrong with this? Nothing from my standpoint. I, as a writer, am ultimately responsible for what I put my name on, but something like this could sure do a lot of the time-consuming research and heavy lifting.

But there are already concerns about students using this to write their papers. One clergy has already publicly condemned pastors who us A.I. to write their sermons, saying, that “their sermons would have no soul.”

But contain your freaking out until I explain that the above drawing was created by A.I. after I put in the description, “Colored pencil drawing of an African American man fighting a robot.” Yes, it creates images from word descriptions.

What about, “Create a picture of a train on a railroad track in the style of Rembrandt?” In 20-seconds or so, it gives you four options to choose from. Here was my favorite.

Or bees flying around a cow in the style of Van Gogh. Here’s one that it created.

And in-between your projects, it gives you hints on how better to ask for your creations.

And so on.

If you’d like to play along, here’s the website for the graphics AI.

And now you have a couple of powerful new tools in your arsenal, you big go-getter, you. I know I’ll be putting to use. Already have.

I thought you would want to know.

Hello, New World.

Tim Hunter