Soon, Rachel and her match were speaking daily, their conversations running the gamut from the ridiculous (favourite memes, ketchup v mayonnaise) to the sublime (expectations in love, childhood traumas). Often they’d have late-night exchanges that left her staring at her phone long after she should have been asleep. “They were like things that you read in self-help books – really personal conversations about who we are and what we want for our lives,” she says.
Which is why the man who greeted her inside the pub – polite, pleasant but oddly flat – felt like a stranger. Gone was the quickfire wit and playful rhythm she’d come to expect from their exchanges. Over pints he stumbled through small talk, checked his phone a little too often, and seemed to wilt under the pressure of her questions. “I felt like I was sitting opposite someone I’d never even spoken to,” she says. “I tried to have the same sort of conversation as we’d been having online, but it was like, ‘Knock, knock, is anyone home?’ – like he knew basically nothing about me. That’s when I suspected he’d been using AI.”
Tag: chatgpt
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The rise of chatfishing
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ChatGPT as a therapeutic tool
Can ChatGPT act as a therapeutic tool? Possibly, but you still have to recognize it for what it is.
As ChatGPT became an intellectual partner, I felt emotions I hadn’t expected: warmth, frustration, connection, even anger. Sometimes the exchange sparked more than insight — it gave me an emotional charge. Not because the machine was real, but because the feeling was.
But when it slipped into fabricated error or a misinformed conclusion about my emotional state, I would slam it back into place. Just a machine, I reminded myself. A mirror, yes, but one that can distort. Its reflections could be useful, but only if I stayed grounded in my own judgment.
I concluded that ChatGPT wasn’t a therapist, although it sometimes was therapeutic. But it wasn’t just a reflection, either. In moments of grief, fatigue or mental noise, the machine offered a kind of structured engagement. Not a crutch, but a cognitive prosthesis — an active extension of my thinking process.
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Chefs sprinkle in some ChatGPT
Chefs have started using ChatGPT as a tool to think up flavors, learn obscure cooking techniques outside of their repertoire, keep track of seasonal ingredients, and concoct plating designs. One of those chefs is Grant Achatz, of Alinea.
Since Mr. Achatz’s first serious experiments with ChatGPT, about a year ago, it has become his favorite kitchen tool, something he used to say about Google. Its answers to his questions about paleontology and Argentine cuisine helped him create a dish inspired by Patagonian fossils at his flagship restaurant, Alinea.
I had the opportunity to dine at Alinea last April, and this dish was served. The presentation appeared as a miniature archealogical dig, complete with tools, and while interesting, wasn’t our favorite dish
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ChatGPT turning images into Studio Ghibli
ChatGPT turning images into Studio Ghibli
The trend kicked off pretty wholesomely. Couples transformed portraits, pet owners generated cartoonish cats, and many people are busily Ghibli-fying their families (I’ve stuck to selfies, not wanting to share with OpenAI my siblings’ likenesses). It’s an AI-generated version of the human-drawn art commissions people offer on Etsy — you and your loved ones, in the style of your favorite anime.
It didn’t take long for the trend to go full chaos mode. Nothing is sacred: the Twin Towers on 9/11, JFK’s assassination, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang signing a woman’s chest, President Donald Trump’s infamous group photo with Jeffrey Epstein, and even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s congressional testimony have all been reimagined with that distinctive Ghibli whimsy (it’s not clear whether these users transformed uploaded images, or prompted the system to copy them). Altman has played into the trend too — he even changed his X profile picture into a Ghibli rendering of himself and encouraged his followers to make him a new one.