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 with gift ideas based on A person’s Instagram profile.
I chose more DreamGift, which uses a chatbot 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 items online. (My husband admits he likes some of the bot’s gift suggestions, which include an indoor weeding kit, more than some of the gifts I’ve given him over the years. Ouch.)
If you prefer to use a chatbot, that works too. Bing and Bard, connected search engines, are powerful shopping assistants. The trick to getting custom recommendations is sharing lots of details about your budget and the people you’re buying from.
Storytelling
Let’s finish with something more creative. You can use AI to create a customized bedtime story or even your own hard-copy children’s book.
Give a chatbot like ChatGPT or Bard a detailed prompt that includes your child’s preferred storytelling style, any details you want 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 to a new home. I asked it to include some familiar characters:
Act as a children’s book writer, imitating “Frog and Toad.” My son is going through a difficult time — we are moving to a new home and changing schools. Write a story to help him process that. Include our dogs, Max and Mochi the corgis, as characters.
The chatbot developed 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 support each other and eventually attend a new school, where they make new friends: Bella the lively Beagle and Charlie the cheeky Chihuahua. Everything worked out in the end.