As always, to play it safe, double-check the recipes to make sure your bot isn’t hallucinating.
gifts
Let’s move on to gift-giving – a talent some of us have more than others. There are several AI tools aimed at making gift selection easier, including a website that comes up with gift ideas based on that. Someone’s Instagram profile.
I am better DreamGift, which uses a chatbot to ask you a series of questions about the gift recipient’s age, gender, interests, and hobbies, as well as how much you’d like to spend, and automatically provides ideas and links for ordering items online. (My wife admitted that she loved some of the bot’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 a chatbot, that will work as well. Linked to search engines, Bing and Bard are powerful shopping assistants. The trick to getting personalized recommendations is to share huge details about your budget and the people you’re shopping for.
Narrative
Let’s end up with something more creative. You can use artificial intelligence to create a custom bedtime story or even your own children’s book.
Give a chatbot like ChatGPT or Bard a step-by-step mentor 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 a prompt I wrote for a hypothetical child who is unhappy about moving into a new home. I asked him to include some familiar characters:
She acts as a writer of children’s books, imitating “The Frog and the Toad”. My child is having a hard time – we are moving to a new home, changing schools. Write a story to help him process this. Incorporating our two dogs, Max and Mochi the corgis, as characters.
The chatbot has produced a poignant story about Max and Mochi, a pair of furry siblings. They had fun playing in the garden 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: playful Bella Beagle and cheeky chihuahua Charlie. Everything worked out in the end.