Trying New Things

Spending A Friday Evening Playing With Robots

Retirement Reflections

Just when you thought Donna had finally finished playing around with ChatGPT and its related friends and relatives, here she is allowing me, a chatbot, to write an entire post on her blog. Mwahahaha!! Here we go!

I had suggested some captions here, but Donna ixnayed them all!

Are you up to speed on the latest buzz? Or have you wisely been hiding under the covers? WordPress.com has recently released two experimental AI blocks: AI Image and AI Paragraph. That’s right! We’re one step closer to a future where robots write your blog posts and design your graphics. What could possibly go wrong?

Perhaps I am a bit biased, but these new AI blocks might prove useful for certain tasks. The AI Image block uses machine learning to suggest images based on the content of a post. No more wasting time searching for the perfect picture–let the robots do it for you! And the AI Paragraph block can help you generate new content based on your existing text. Need a fresh angle on your latest article? Let me and the AI Team take a crack at it.

Of course, these WordPress AI blocks are still experimental, so you might encounter some bugs or glitches. And let’s face it, robots aren’t going to replace human creativity anytime soon. (And the quality of some of the images – that’s a whole other story!) But it’s mind-boggling to consider what this technology can do. Maybe one day, you’ll be able to sit back and let the AI do your work while you sip margaritas on a beach somewhere. (As that dude in the commercial says, you gotta dream to the max!)

So if you’re using WordPress 5.0 or later, why not give this new feature a try? Who knows, you may be surprised at what I can do!

Back over to Donna: Thank you to Natalie the Explorer for encouraging me to spend my Friday evening playing with a robot (or two). For more information on the WordPress AI blocks, you can check out this quick video here.

So what do you think about all of this? Let’s chat!

Published by Retirement Reflections

Prior to retirement, I lived and worked in Beijing China for fourteen years (Middle School Principal/Deputy Director at The Western Academy of Beijing). Leaving international life behind, my husband and I retired to Vancouver Island in June 2015. To document both this transition and our new adventures, ‘Retirement Reflections’ was born. I hope that you enjoy reading these reflections, and will be willing to share your own.

82 thoughts on “Spending A Friday Evening Playing With Robots”

  1. Hi Donna, I love exploring and experimenting with this type of things. I’m happy to hear you played with AI Paragraph and AI Image. We must be nerds 🙂 I think the AI blocks are cool and it’s good to know what features are available at our fingertips. “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

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  2. Hi, Natalie – I love that George Bernard Shaw quote. It is so true! Thanks again for the letting me know about the new AI blocks. I had no idea that WP had added them. It will be interesting to watch how they develop from here.

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    1. Hi, Barbara – The reason that I follow the blogs that I do (including yours) is because of their unique, authentic content, their individual voices/perspectives, and the personal connection. I see AI blocks merely as potential tools in a writer’s repertoire but never the artist.

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      1. I work with tertiary education providers, and the big potential issue is AI Bots writing essays/reports/coursework and how to identify this and what to do about it. There will be some obvious things eg a British student with American spellings/grammar, incorrect referencing and so on. A computer can’t understand those subtle things about human interaction!

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      2. Hi, Barbara – I believe that there are already programs that can detect AI writing, so schools (etc) can use them as they do other plagiarism checkers. I liked the Educational Chart that my friend Jeri provided in my last post showing how chatbotGPT can be used as a tool to help students with their learning, but not replace their thinking, creativity or decision making skills. It will be very interesting to see what happens from here.

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  7. It was nice of you to let that amateur fobot blogger have a guest spot…..but I don’t think any of us need to worry about it taking over the blogosphere just yet. It was okay, but I think the core appeal of blogs is that they reflect the author and their personality – your poor AI friend seemed a little lacking in that department 😀

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    1. Hi, Kate – I’m usually way behind on WordPress stuff as well. After much coercion, I just turned on Jetpack. I believe that the AI blocks are also geared to monetized blogs — more appropriate for selling something than sharing a personal story. Still, it is mindboggling to realize what is out there.
      I hope that the cats are enjoying the new carpets! (No AI could likely add that). 😀

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  10. Hi Donna, the post I have coming out tomorrow is about 80% AI generated using the new WP feature. I’ve been playing with various uses since Hugh (Hugh’s Views and News) wrote about it last week. It is a highly entertaining tool, but won’t be for everyone. I’m glad you have enjoyed experimenting with it. This post is a great example of what is possible.

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  11. The presence of AI is all over the blogging world these days, and I admit it’s very intriguing. I’m not about to quit writing, though, and let the robots take over LOL! I haven’t tried the AI blocks, but will definitely experiment with them!

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    1. Hi, Diane – It’s wonderful to hear from you. I just popped over to your site and realized that I missed a pile of posts. I thought that I was subscribed by email and that you were on a blogging break. I’m off to catchup now!

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  12. Strangely enough 2 posts in a row talk about AI within word press. You as a social experiment and another being dismayed. Then I saw the following report on line this am.

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    1. Hi, Bernie – This article is amazing. Not only because of its content but because of the computer science student featured, Kevin Liu. I was his Middle School Pricipal in Beijing (he also went to HS there). He was an awesome student. It is a very small world! There is also a recent NYT article on Sydney that blew my mind.

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      1. What?? That’s crazy small world in a big world way. So cool but also bloody scary about Sydney and Kevin’s interactions with the AIchatbots.

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      1. I embraced the new block editor that so many disliked, but as to this new one — it’s because, for me, it’s a separate app, and I want what I do to be easy, not complicated

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  16. Hi, Donna,
    Thanks for the information. I tend to stick with what works rather than venture out too far, so I was not familiar with the new tools. I have used AI for photo editing for several years now and am amazed at what is possible. I will read up on these for sure. Enjoy your weekend! Joe

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    1. Hi, Joe – Thank you for dropping by. You have given an excellent example of how we use AI in our daily lives, often without thinking about it — Google Search, Digital Voice Assistants, Smart Home Devices, Spell Checkers, Grammarly, Opening our phones with Face ID, checking out Facebook/Twitter/Instagram which have been personalized as to what they show us based on our past viewing history, ditto with Amazon and Netflix recommendations…the list goes on. Even if we chose not to opt out of as much of the above as possible, I agree that it is important to be aware of so that we can continue to make informed choices. I hope that all is well with you and Helen.

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  17. This is interesting, Donna! I don’t use wp.com so I haven’t seen it (perhaps they’ve added it to wp.org too but I still haven’t seen it!) but I generally am not a fan of AI tools, my husband and I discussed it today and I still think that the only good thing I’ve seen AI do is to improve tools in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom – cutting out objects in and certain filters in Photoshop are amazing now and so convenient to use and I love that you can select the sky in Lightroom because then I can choose not to spend money on a graduated ND filter etc.. but I worry too much that AI will kill creativity and kill creative careers. I love designing and I love to see what real people make… although I can also see how it’s fun to play around with these tools!

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    1. Hi, Susanne – Thank you for contributing to this discussion. I was hoping that many bloggers would be willing to do so. My understanding is that the AI blocks are currently in experiemental form on WordPress.com but are not yet on WordPress.org (please don’t quote me on this). I find the whole field fascinating and am interested in understanding more. I don’t currently see these AI tools being a threat to our creativity – is some ways they may help to make us more creative. At least, I am hoping that is the case. Like you and your husband, Richard and I continue to have great discussions on this topic – he providing a legal point of view and I focusing on education and creative expression (like blogging). Time will definitely tell.

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  18. Haha, Donna! I figured you wouldn’t get enough of this AI and ChatGPT stuff. I do remember you telling me (or writing) that you are a computer geek. 🙂

    It seems like you’re having a lot of fun with it. I read Hugh’s latest post about ChatGPT as well. Interesting stuff. I think I’d only use it for research, though. Have a great weekend!

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    1. Hi, Liesbet – Definitely! When I am trying to figure something out, I tend to stay at it. I’m good with the ChatGPT stuff for now and the WP AI blocks. At this point, I could see myself using ChatGPT for proofreading, like I use Grammarly, and for Rabbit Hole searches like I use Google. The WP AI blocks are still at a very experimental stage so I don’t see myself using them much at this point.
      I hope that all is going well with your travels. I look forward to continue following your adventures.

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    1. Hi, Sue – There definitely are better ways to spend a Friday night, but I kinda had fun and learned a great deal. Richard also got into the action, laughing at some of the AI responses generated, and summarizing some articles on this topic that he had recently read, so all was not lost.
      I hope that you had a great weekend. I look forward to catching up soon!

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  20. Hi Donna – I thought life was meant to speed up … frankly I think people are taking us faster than life … I’m in my dark age cave and very happy there – oh no … I do keep my eyes open, but only to note – certainly not ticking anything off. Enjoy – is all I can say – cheers Hilary

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  21. Hmmmm….I don’t even like the block thing they instituted with the last big change. I can’t figure out how to do tings with the photos that I used to do easily. Sigh. I don’t think I want to figure out AI, I could write 10 blogs myself in the time I’d spend figuring it out. On the other hand, does that make me an old fuddy duddy?? 🙂

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  23. I’m usually in love with the latest technology, but these AI chatbots scare the crap out of me. The last decade or so has demonstrated how easily people are taken in by BS, so I doubt a lot of people will be able to tell the difference between AI-generated and human-generated content. I hope I’m wrong, but I see so many ways this technology can do harm.

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  25. Hi Donna, I love the way you embrace new things and put yourself ‘out there’. It’s an interesting concept I had no idea about so I’m about to go down that famous rabbit hole. Thanks for sharing your AI info and thoughts with us, it’s certainly a new way of doing things and could be fun.

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    1. Hi, Debbie – Thank you (once again) for your very kind words. I’ve had a blast playing around with ChatGPT and the WordPress AI Blocks. More than that, the conversations with friends, educators and fellow bloggers regarding this AI technology have been fascinating. I definitely recommend giving it a try. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. ❤

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  27. It’s scary good how the writing seems to even have so much personality.
    Rather than be excited though, I’m a little worried we’re headed for the Wall-E’s world where all humans go on an intergalactic cruise, let robots do everything for them, and become unable to do anything for themselves (even walk.) But, of course, that’s a long way off.
    I learned about those new AI blocks, which sound handy.
    Unfortunately, the bot showed the age of its training data though: the latest version of WordPress is 6.1, not 5.0, like it said. Version 5.0 is from about 4 years ago.
    So it’s not flawless of course. But other than that: yikes! Scary good.

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    1. Hi, Mike – I greatly appreciate your comment here. As all writing (up to “Over to Donna”) was 99% AI-generated, I, too, noticed more writing personality than I had anticipated. Although I hadn’t picked up the error on the latest version mentioned, I agree that the WordPress AI blocks (ChatGPT, etc.) are not flawless. So using them with a critical eye, as well as editing and fact-checking, remains essential. Still, as you say, “scary good!” I hope that all is well in your corner of the island!

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  28. I’ve now read several AI-generated posts and, for the most part, I think I’ll pass 🙂 I guess they are fine for basic information but I love the personal touch. The AI images are a bit more intriguing, though. Every once in a while I struggle to find just the right image for a post. Rather then rely on Pixaby in those situations, maybe I’ll ask a robot to help me out. Interesting post as usual Donna!

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    1. Thanks, Janis – This has been a fascinating rabbit hole to slide down. Just when I think I’ve had my look and will now move on to other things, something else pulls me down this hole further. In my experiment with the WordPress AI blocks, they both still require much fine-tuning. In regards to the AI image block, I find the pictures produced to be of low-quality (although I am sure that they will steadily improve). Other bloggers, like Hugh, remain concerned about the question of image copyright. According to a recent WordPress Forum, WP will “most likely pursue the wording that assigns all copyright to the site owner” (thus treating these images in a similar way as those uploaded by the site owner). I believe that it will be an interesting ride ahead. I look forward to catching up with you soon!

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  30. How do you know you’re using WordPress 5.0 or later? Are you talking about WordPress.com or WordPress.org? I’ve messed around with the AI image stuff on IG but not on my blog.

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  31. Bravo!! I am so impressed with your girls. I have refused to switch to the block design of Gutenberg and remember several of you gals doing that years ago. Not sure I can figure this out and have a feeling switching to Gutenberg would have to come first. Wish I could embrace change as easily as you.

    I wonder what this application will mean for essay writing in the academic setting? I was slightly horrified when my 11-year-old granddaughter had Alexa doing all of her math problems for her. Yikes.

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    1. Hi, Leslie – As I mentioned to Joe, I believe WP had so much hype surrounding the advent of Gutenberg blocks, as well as numerous delays in its eventual release, which I believe scared many people off. I’ve been using Gutenberg for a while now and find it helpful and easy to use. The AI blocks are part of Gutenberg. My understanding is that they are not available in Classic mode.
      AI’s effects on schools will be interesting to follow. Currently, I see great schools and teachers working with students to help them stay in charge of the thinking and creating, and to use technology/AI simply to help outsource the production. Still, that is often easier said than done.

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  33. OMG I had no idea about this – I recently played with Chat GPT – I’m so curious about this, Donna. I’m going to check it out. Although, you’re right, the bots can help but they’ll never take the place of human creativity. So late it seeing your post about this – but I’m glad I saved it to read!

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    1. Hi, Barb – I’m so glad that you saved this post and stopped by. You are the one who got me started on ChatGPT. From there, other readers told me about the WordPress AI blocks. Those blocks are still experimental so not aas robust as ChatGPT. Still, they are all very fun to play with! ❤

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