I still remember the first time AI genuinely surprised me. Not the usual mild amusement you get when a new gadget works as advertised, but a proper jolt, the creative equivalent of discovering a forgotten ten-pound note in an old coat. I was in my shed, rain machine-gunning the windows, halfway through a cup of tea that had already gone cold thanks to my talent for distraction.
Continue reading “Is AI the New Imagination? A Grandad’s Guide to Navigating Wonder”
How two AI tools turned still pictures into moving art, and why this is just the beginning
This week I tried a small experiment that turned into something surprisingly delightful. I took six still images created in Midjourney and asked it to turn each one into a five-second video. Nothing fancy, no complicated prompting, just a simple “animate this” test to see what it could do.
Continue reading “When Six Images Became a Mini-Film: Testing Midjourney + ElevenLabs “
Google’s new report imagines AI as a personal tutor, teaching assistant, and global equaliser in education, but can it truly unlock human potential without losing the human heart of learning?
One of my favourite podcasts, that I listen to every week without fail, is called, ‘The Artificial Intelligence Show’. It was here that I first heard about this report, ‘AI and The Future of Learning’ published by Google, outlining what they see as the future of education and learning.
Continue reading “The AI Revolution in Education: How Google Plans to Unlock Human Potential”
This week’s AI Drabble Challenge began with a simple idea: combine two images and ask an AI to tell a story. I’ve used images before as creative sparks, but this time I wanted to see what would happen if I merged two, not just visually, but emotionally.
The result was a story that didn’t just emerge from AI; it evolved through it. What started as a neat 100-word piece became something richer, deeper, and strangely more human.
Continue reading “When Two Images Became a Story”
Every time I post something involving AI, I know what’s coming. A few writers(often my writer friends) will tell me, quite firmly, that they’ll never touch AI “with a barge pole.” Others worry that using it might dull the human brain, or that writing with its help feels like cheating, like handing in someone else’s homework. Some say it produces “soulless” words, and that real writing should only ever come from real people.
And honestly, I understand every one of those feelings. Writing is deeply personal. It’s how we make sense of the world, and of ourselves. When we sit down to write, it’s our emotions, memories and imagination that shape the story. So when a machine suddenly enters that creative space, it can feel like an intruder, a cold, logical guest who doesn’t understand what it means to struggle for the right word or to feel that spark of inspiration.
Continue reading “Why Some Writers Feel Uneasy About AI”
The AI Grandad 