-
-
-
-
Digging Deeper — Episode 3: The $3,000 House in Japan: Bargain, Money Pit, or a Souvenir You May Never Visit?
Every once in a while, an advertisement or social-media post comes along that sounds so ridiculous that the immediate reaction is to assume somebody left out a zero. Then you look into it and discover the number may actually be real, which is where things become much more interesting. A recent post making the rounds…
-
Something Squirrely — Episode 7: They’ll Give You the AI Girl for Free — They Just Want a Cut of Everything She Makes
There is one particular advertisement that has apparently decided it and I are now in a committed relationship because it keeps appearing in my Facebook feed. The message changes slightly, but the story remains pretty much the same: artificial-intelligence creators are making people serious money, you can get your first AI creator for free, you…
-
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…
-
Something Squirrely — Episode 6: You Built a Proprietary App. So Why Is It Training Their AI?
There are plenty of AI advertisements that deserve skepticism because the underlying product does not appear capable of doing what the advertisement promises. Hercules is more interesting because the product itself appears genuinely impressive. The Facebook advertisement that caught my attention makes a beautifully simple pitch: “No API keys. No DevOps. No agencies. No kidding.”…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Something Stinks: Your 100,000-Word “Finished Book” Apparently Still Needs a Writer
There is a particular kind of advertisement that works because it takes something difficult, frustrating and deeply human, then removes almost everything difficult, frustrating and human from it. Writing a book is a perfect target. People spend months or years outlining, drafting, rewriting, deleting entire chapters, changing character motivations, moving scenes around, fixing continuity mistakes…
