On the first Sunday in August 2015, we launched latitude65.ca, in which our firstpost answered The Question, “In your around-the-world-trip, what was your favourite place?”—our two days and nights in Oman’s Rub’ al Khali, which translates literally into ‘quarter of emptiness,’ commonly called the Empty Quarter.

A blog every Sunday? For eight years? We had no such plans. Our motive was to share the digital travel scrapbook we’re creating—for the looming future when we won’t remember where we’ve been. 

Now, we’re having too much fun to stop. 

But another question is looming. With our IQ falling and AI getting smarter, will a chatbot compose our 500^th blog?

We’re using ChatGPT-4 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), a chatbot that can write (in addition to photo captions) newspaper articles, emails and essays. Compose poems, songs and stories. And perform many other tasks—in nanoseconds. ChatGPT’s next iteration will produce a 60,000-word novel in about 20 seconds. A guidebook, say How to Improve Your Memory Before Breakfast, in even less time.

We asked it for ideas for our 400^th blog, but they were either boring and/or things we’ve already done for other milestones, like indicating which blogs were readers’ favourites. Which prompted us to ask ChatGPT which of our posts it liked best:

As an AI language model, I do not have the ability to have personal preferences or favorites. However, I can tell you that Latitude65’s blog covers a wide range of topics related to travel, lifestyle, and adventure in the Canadian North. The blog posts are informative and engaging and provide readers with a unique perspective on life in the Arctic region.

Full marks for an instant response, but this isn’t the five-metre dash.

If you were a teacher grading this response, how would you rate it?

• F, Are you working for Fox News? or
• C, Which part of you was not switched on? or
• A, We are so flattered and will recommend you for that job at Hallmark?

We asked ChatGPT to write our 400^th blog. The instant response was stale as a week-old bread crust because, as in human communication, better prompts elicit better responses. So we asked for a poem about our blog.

In the land of ice and snow, 
Where Latitude65's blog does flow, 
Stories of adventure and travel, 
In the Arctic's frosty marvel.
From the northern lights' dance, 
To the tales of polar bears' chance, 
The blog captures the beauty and awe, 
Of the Canadian North, without a flaw.
With vivid imagery and prose, 
The blog takes readers on a journey close, 
To the heart of the Arctic's grandeur, 
And leaves them with a sense of wonder.
So let us raise a glass to Latitude65's blog, 
and the stories it tells with such great cog, 
May it continue to inspire and enlighten, 
As we journey through life, both bright and frighten.

What’s with the Arctic fixation? If one of my former grade 4 students had written this, I’d have taken her aside, with my red pen…

We asked for another poem a few weeks later and got this overdose of saccharine:

Latitude 65, oh blog so fine 
With tales of travel, oh so divine 
From the far north to the southern coast 
Your stories and photos always boast
Of mountains high and valleys low 
And the wonders that nature bestows 
From the aurora borealis' dance 
To the wildlife's wild prance
Oh Latitude 65, your words do inspire
 To pack our bags and head out higher 
To explore the world, near and far 
And capture memories, like a shooting star
Your stories transport us to new lands 
As we read, we hold the world in our hands 
With each new post, we feel anew 
The thrill of travel, waiting for me and you
So here's to Latitude 65, our favorite blog 
We'll keep reading and following along 
For as long as we have wanderlust in our hearts 
We'll keep exploring, until the world imparts.

But what brought AI to the “OMG” stage for us was a wedding invitation our daughter Lynn received from a couple who are designers and creative directors. We know the bride, Suzanne, whose wicked sense of humour jumps off the screen with the AI-generated imagery she created of the happy couple—who are seen getting married as everything from west-coast Muppets to flower-crowned medieval cats to Martians on their home planet. She and her partner Kirk are pioneering AI design through their soon-to-be-launched company Unicorn Fuel—you can discover more about them in our Navigation.

Riffing on their creativity, Magellan went to work…to work…to work…

Should be easy for an old computer nerd, shouldn’t it? 

It’s not. You enter a text prompt of up to 400 letters (nice coincidence for our 400^th blog) and within 30 seconds you get an original work of art!

In trying to create a feature photo for this blog, I uploaded a “seed image” (after trying many, I settled on us at Seljalandsfoss), wrote various text prompts (“make it funnier”) until the AI generated an image of an old couple with seven cameras, trying to slow the shutter speed so they could “freeze” the waterfall. So, so, but a fail.”

We also made attempts at a dinner party theme, then thought a tieback to our first post about the Empty Quarter in Oman might be better?

Enough! That was when we decided to call on an an expert, Suzanne Reeves at Art+Soul Design…

Now, Try AI Yourself!

In the Leave a Reply below, you can try your skill at writing a text prompt to get ChatGPT to write a comment on AI, on this post or on our website. Or have it write a poem (please prompt it to limit the poem to a maximum 12 lines or so). Alternatively, write a text prompt asking DALL.E-2 to create an image. You can see some samples in the DALL.E 2 Prompt Book.

Within a day, we will copy your prompt into either ChatGPT or DALL.E 2 and then post the results as a part of your Comment. We’ll also notify you by email when Magellan has it ready.

You could also open your own OpenAI account. The basic version of ChatGPT is free. DALL-E 2 is also free, but there is a catch. You’re allotted 50 free credits during your first month’s use and 15 free credits after that.

If you were to do it this way, you could put your ChatGPT generated text into your Comment yourself, but if you used DALL-E, send the image to [email protected] so we can add it to your original Comment.

Have fun!

Navigation

Art + Soul Design is Suzanne’s company. Suzanne’s an improv grad of Second City in addition to holding a degree in art from Emily Carr and another in psychology from U of T. Head to Suzanne’s profile page and you’ll see why, if you need a designer, she’s your gal. Plus, as we mentioned above, she and her partner Kirk (fifty design awards on his mantle) are pioneering AI design through their company Unicorn Fuel. Yeah, we’re biased. We’ve known Suzanne since the mid-70s when her mom Myrna and Spice met while teachers at Sunalta School and our families became friends. Plus, she rescued this blog!