3 Things AI: Issue #8

Welcome to Issue #8 of 3 Things AI - a weekly* note where I share three practical or interesting ways I used AI this week.

This week involved uncovering a particularly useful feature in ChatGPT, using new tools to transform old photos, and exploring AI-powered features in familiar apps (hint: check out the shared playlist below).

Here is one I stumbled onto recently (thanks to one of my kids) and use all the time now.

When ChatGPT gives you a response, you can highlight any part of that text and a little "Ask ChatGPT" button appears. Click it, and it will insert that text into the chat window, so you can ask a follow-up question about just that specific passage. No copying, no pasting, no re-explaining what you were talking about.

The uses are pretty practical. Highlight a sentence that lost you and ask it to simplify. Select a paragraph and ask for the main point. Grab a claim that sounds a little too confident and ask it to fact-check itself. This is especially helpful as one of my frustrations with ChatGPT, and perhaps the AI chat window format in general - is that you can really get lost in a lot of content, especially once you’ve asked it a few different questions and perhaps gone on some side tangents. It’s a lot of scrolling to find something you want to revisit - so at least when you do find it, you can just highlight it and click the button to drill in, instead of trying to describe what you mean.

One caveat: the exact behavior can vary a bit depending on your account and what browser you are using. But if you have not tried it yet, next time ChatGPT gives you a long response, just highlight a chunk and see what happens.

My father-in-law recently passed away, and among his things were boxes and albums of old photos - his childhood, his parents' lives, and the world they built together. He was born in Kano, Nigeria in 1940, to parents who had each traveled there separately as Christian missionaries in the early 1930s, and met along the way. His parents lived fascinating lives in a fascinating place, caught right at the moment the modern world was rushing in on traditional ways, and served for 45 years(!), finally returning to the US in the mid-1970s.

The problem is a lot of the photos were hard to see or slightly damaged - or just like most photos - a bit old and weathered and lacking that detail and clarity that one desires. What did that village look like in 1932? What did her grandparents’s smiles look like when they were so young? What would these scenes look like in color?

There must be an AI for that!

I used Gemini, as it is known for being the best with images and videos. I took photos with my iPhone of the original photos, uploaded one at a time to Gemini, and tried several different prompts. The prompt I settled upon was the following:

“Make this photo look like it was taken today but don’t change any of the details. Pay close attention to the faces and try to stay true to their actual faces and the details there. But don’t make it look like a painting.“

Examples of the before and after photos are below - and there are many more - just too many to share in this short newsletter. This definitely does not work perfectly each time. And there’s no real rhyme or reason why it fails, but sometimes it just bonks. Other times it really butchers faces, or makes it look like a painting, or the AI simply won’t provide an honest rendition of the scene. I also learned to start a new chat for each picture. It seems to blow up and get confused if you keep pasting new pictures in the same chat. It may also be better if you professionally converted physical photos to digital ones - versus taking pictures with your phone.

All in all - pretty amazing technology. And you can take any picture you have and go the other way - make it look retro, like a movie scene, whatever. A sampling of my results is below (zoom in for the details). Try it yourself and have fun!

Sample 1: This street scene from a Nigerian village, taken in 1932, could have been taken 2,000 years ago. Note the man on the mule, or the young boy with the bowl on his head. A really incredible shot.

Sample 2: My wife’s grandmother was a nurse and worked at a leprosarium, a clinic that specialized in treating leprocy patients. Being a very rural area, they treated all sorts of patients. The caption on the back of the photo below was written by her and says: “One of my prized patients! He walked home two months later.” The rendering of the facial expressions on both the boy and the man in this photo are really sharp - and the whole scene just pulls the viewer in.

Sample 3: The photo below is my wife’s grandmother. The note on the back of the picture says, “On tour in Katsina Province, 1938.” It’s cool seeing the car in the background looking brand new, but I have no idea why Gemini gave her grandmother glasses and made her look much older. I think sometime sit just doesn’t get faces right.

Sample 4: This one is a fascinating picture that captures a specific colonial-era meeting. We don’t know who the two European men are, but the note on the back of the photo reads: “Zinder, 1936. Emir of Z-rat. Chief of Tauregs of Zinder - left.“ I used Gemini to interpret, and the short version is as follows: “Taken in Zinder in 1936 - now Niger, but a regular crossing point between British Nigeria and French Niger - the photo captures two European travelers alongside the Sultan of Zinder (viewer’s left) and a Tuareg Chief (viewer’s right), each in full traditional regalia. The motorcycle visible in the background suggests this was an early motorized expedition through the Sahel, making it a remarkable snapshot of colonial-era West Africa at the crossroads of two worlds.” The details in this one are amazing!

I love music, and while it’s great that we can have all the world’s music catalog at our fingertips, I still engage with these tools mostly the way I always have engaged with my own collection - which is mainly through saving everything as an album. I occasionally make playlists, but they’re usually for specific purposes like a road trip. I use Spotify - so I can’t speak to the Apple Music experience - but the playlists that are “Made for You” on Spotify mostly annoy me. They have become so algorithm-tuned that they keep feeding me stuff I already know. Even when you hone on an artist or a genre they over-correct for songs I already listen to or have in my Liked songs, etc.

So I had low expectations when I first noticed the new feature called “Prompted Playlist,” which you can access from the “+/Create” button in the lower right of the app. Note there is also a feature called “AI playlist” - and while both let you create playlists from a text prompt, Prompted Playlists go further by pulling from your full listening history, updating automatically over time, and even explaining why each song was chosen.

This offers all sorts of interesting possibilities, and while I don’t anticipate ever being fully satisfied, I’ve found it to be an incredible way to make a playlist.

For example, one of my favorite albums to listen to while flying on a plane or doing focused work is Garth Stevenson’s “Flying” - which is also the soundtrack to Tracks. If you haven't seen Tracks, the story of a young woman who trekked 1,700 miles across the Australian desert with four camels, that's a whole other recommendation!

When looking for ambient-type music I also love a lot of “neo-classical” artists, like Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds. However, when Spotify mixes these artists based on their genre, I find a lot of stuff in the mix that really shouldn’t be there, or that I just find too dark.

So I decided to prompt a playlist.

Spotify generates it pretty quickly, but not instantly, and it provides a summary of the playlist and short blurbs on why each song is included, which is pretty cool. It reminds me of the heady language that used to be on the liner notes or scattered on the inner sleeves of vinyl albums. You can also edit your prompt and regenerate your playlist anytime.

Here’s the prompt I used, and the playlist is linked here for you to enjoy and share! Try to create some yourself!

Prompt: I want focused music for work. I love Garth Stevenson Flying and similar sounds. I love neo classical artists like Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnolds. I don’t want songs that drift too dark and minor but don’t only want happy sounding major chords. Just good music to grind out focused work to.

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*Sorry faithful readers! February rocked my world on a few different levels, and I somehow haven’t published in a long while! We’re back, and thanks for your patience!

If you have feedback, questions, or an AI tool you’re enjoying, just reply. I’m always curious what others are using.

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