Falling Down the AI Rabbit Hole: How Curiosity Led Me to Midjourney and ChatGPT

I never meant to fall down the AI rabbit hole.

My curiosity about artificial intelligence really began when I stumbled across Midjourney and ChatGPT. Midjourney appeared in 2022 like a digital paintbrush, allowing anyone to turn words into images, surreal, beautiful, and sometimes downright strange. After trying it out, I was hooked and still use it widely today. In fact, the image that accompanies this post was created by Midjourney. I’ll talk more about AI and image creation in a future post.

Then, in November 2022, came ChatGPT, a tool that could hold a conversation, write stories, and explain almost anything I asked. Again, once I tried it, I knew I was hooked and that it would only get better. Within just five days of its launch, ChatGPT reached over a million users, a record-breaking adoption rate for any online tool at the time. By January 2023, it had surpassed 100 million monthly users, making it the fastest-growing consumer app ever (even faster than TikTok or Instagram in their early days).

Between the two, something clicked. I realised AI wasn’t just for coders or scientists.

At seventy-five, I’ve seen a fair bit of technology come and go. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, which I bought in the 1980s. Around the same time, the primary school where I worked received a single BBC Micro Computer, just one for the entire school, courtesy of a government initiative we were all supposed to feel excited about! I even learned how to program it, a skill I never really used, but it amazes me that today, AI can code far better and quicker than I ever could.

When I look back, it’s hard to believe that as a child in the 1950s there were only two TV channels, BBC and ITV. Colour television was still a novelty, and most people used public telephone boxes, dropping coins into the slot to make a call. I’ll stop there before I start feeling ancient!

This new age of AI feels unlike any technological phase I’ve lived through. For one thing, it’s moving at an astonishing, almost frightening, pace. We’ll explore more of that in future posts.

I remember the first time I asked AI to help with a story, I half expected something cold and mechanical. Instead, it offered a line so eerily human I reread it twice. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or slightly unnerved. That’s when I realised AI isn’t here to replace imagination, it’s here to remind us how much of it we still have.

Friends often ask, “Aren’t you worried it’ll take over?” Not really. I’ve seen enough classroom chalk dust and curriculum changes to know that every new tool brings a learning curve and a few exaggerated headlines. What fascinates me is how easily creativity adapts. Whether it’s pen and paper or pixels and prompts, the human urge to make meaning never disappears, it just finds new surfaces to write on.

There’s a quiet joy in learning something new when the world assumes you’re too old for it. Each click, each discovery, feels like a small act of rebellion against the idea that curiosity has an expiry date.

Some days, I still miss my short stories blog, my old corner of the internet where I wrote micro-fiction and Drabbles. But those stories are my roots, and this new blog, The AI Grandad, is the branch reaching toward the future.

So here’s my plan: to share what I learn, to experiment, and to prove that you don’t have to be young to explore new worlds. You just have to stay curious.

If curiosity is a muscle, I’m determined to keep mine in shape. And if AI happens to be my new gym, then I suppose it’s time for my next workout.

Curious to see where this journey leads next? Subscribe to The AI Grandad or share your thoughts below, I’d love to hear how AI is changing the way you see creativity.

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