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ChatGPT for Absolute Beginners: No Prompt Engineering Degree Required
Artificial intelligence has reached that slightly awkward stage where almost everyone has heard of it, millions of people use it every day, and plenty of other people are still quietly wondering what everyone is talking about. You may have heard somebody at work mention ChatGPT. You may have seen television stories about artificial intelligence, Facebook…
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Something Squirrely — Episode 5: They Monetized the Loading Screen — and They’ll Give You Half
Every once in a while an advertisement appears that does not immediately make us think, “That’s bullshit.” Instead, it makes us wonder, “Why did nobody think of that sooner?” That was my reaction when an advertisement for Kickbacks.ai appeared in my Facebook feed with an unusual proposition: advertisers bid for the idle line displayed while…
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Something Squirrely — Episode 4: Unlimited AI Images for $99? Sure — If Your Computer Can Handle It
There are advertisements that immediately smell bad, and then there are advertisements that simply make you tilt your head, squint a little and wonder where the squirrel buried the nuts. This one falls into the second category. An advertisement from Distinct AI recently crossed my screen promoting Render FX, a desktop artificial-intelligence image generator. The…
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Digging Deeper Episode 04: Tripo 3D — Free to Create, Paid to Use?
One of the reasons I moved this series from “Something Stinks” to “Digging Deeper” is because not every ad deserves to be dismissed on sight. Some deserve to be tested. Tripo 3D turned out to be one of those cases. Rather than simply looking at the marketing and making assumptions, I decided to create an…
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Digging Deeper – Episode 03: The MakePlay Test — Can One AI Prompt Really Build a Playable Game?
It started as a Something Stinks candidate. Then the damned thing actually worked. When an advertisement says you can describe a video game in a single prompt and have artificial intelligence create the pixel art, code, music, levels, gameplay and a finished playable game in your browser, my first reaction is probably the same as…
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Free AI Video Generators Small Businesses Can Actually Try Before Paying
AI video has reached the point where a small business no longer needs a production company, a professional camera crew, or a giant advertising budget simply to experiment with video content. That does not mean AI has suddenly made professional video production free, effortless, or foolproof. Anyone who has spent an afternoon generating clips knows…
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To AI or Not to AI: Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should
Artificial intelligence has become the technological equivalent of hot sauce. Somebody discovers that it improves one thing, and suddenly there is a person standing in the kitchen wondering whether it belongs on breakfast cereal. AI is useful. Sometimes astonishingly useful. It can help organize enormous amounts of information, identify patterns that would take a human…
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Something Stinks – Episode 07: Your “Viral AI Influencer in Minutes” May Take a Little Longer Than That
There is a particular kind of advertisement becoming increasingly common on social media. It usually begins with a beautiful artificial person staring back at you from a carefully designed screen. The software promises that you can create your own AI influencer almost instantly. No expensive camera. No model. No photography experience. No technical knowledge. No…
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Something Stinks — Episode 01: “Build an Amazon Clone in Minutes?” Let’s Read the Small Print
There is a particular kind of advertisement becoming almost impossible to avoid online. AI will build your business in minutes. AI will replace an entire development team. AI will create your store before your morning coffee gets cold. And apparently, if some of these advertisements are to be believed, you can now build something comparable…
