As always, to play it safe, check the recipes to make sure your bot isn’t hallucinating.
Gifts
Let’s move on to gift-giving — a talent that some of us possess more than others. There are several AI tools that aim to make gift selection easier, including a website that comes up with gift ideas based on someone’s Instagram profile.
i preferred DreamGift, which uses chat to ask you a series of questions about your gift recipient’s age, gender, interests and hobbies, along with how much you’re willing to spend, and automatically provides ideas and links to order the items online. (My wife admitted she liked some of the robot’s gift suggestions, which included an indoor herb-growing kit, more than some of the gifts I’ve given her over the years. Ouch.)
If you prefer to use chat, that will work too. Bing and Bard, which are connected to search engines, are powerful business assistants. The trick to getting custom recommendations is to share great details about your budget and the people you’re shopping for.
Storytelling
Let’s finish with something more creative. You can use AI to create a personalized bedtime story or even your own hard copy children’s book.
Give a chat service such as ChatGPT or Bard a detailed prompt that includes your child’s preferred storytelling style, any details you’d like to include and the situation you want the story to address. Here is an invitation I wrote for a hypothetical child who is sad about moving to a new home. I asked it to involve some familiar characters:
Act like a children’s book writer, imitating “Frog and Toad”. My child is going through a difficult time – we are moving to a new home and changing schools. Write a story to help him process that. Incorporate our dogs, Max and Mochi the corgis, as characters.
The chat spawned a heartfelt story about Max and Mochi, a pair of furry siblings. They enjoyed playing in the park and were sad to move to a new home. But they supported each other and eventually went to a new school, where they made new friends: Bela the lively Beagle and Charlie the cheeky Chihuahua. It all worked out in the end.