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Happy Halloween. Today is the one day everyone agrees to wear a disguise, so it felt like the right day to talk about AI's favorite costume: writing that pretends a person wrote it. Then something fun. One photo of you, transported through 15 decades.
AI INSIGHT
Was This Written by AI? Here's What You Can Actually Tell
I've caught plenty of AI-written emails and reviews. Some are so easy to spot it's almost funny: three tidy bullet points, praise with no specifics, a review that describes the product but never mentions using it.
The trouble is that the easy ones are the only ones you catch. When Epoch AI tested three popular AI detectors, they caught plain AI text nearly every time. But when the AI imitated a real writer's style, the detectors missed about 13% of it, and roughly a quarter of AI-written science writing slipped through. One detector also flagged about 4% of human writing as AI, all of it written before ChatGPT existed.
Platforms are giving up on guessing and starting to label. YouTube Music now marks songs made mainly with AI, and Spotify says it has pulled 50 million AI junk tracks from its recommendations this year.
So swap the question. Instead of "Was this AI?" ask "Does this hold up?" Look for the detail only a real person would know: a date, a name, a specific complaint. Real customers grumble about something. Fake reviews rarely do.
The catch: Nobody can be certain, so never accuse anyone (a grandkid's essay, a neighbor's post) based on a hunch or a detector score alone.
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AI TUTORIAL
See Yourself in Every Decade Since the 1880s
Today is the one day it's normal to show up dressed like it's 1925. AI will do it for you, no itchy wig required. That's my own result above, made in ChatGPT a few months back. Hat tip to my friend Lon Naylor (Facebook ◆ LinkedIn), who inspired it.
1. Pick a clear, front-facing photo in good light. Just you, or someone who gave you permission.
2. Upload it to ChatGPT or Gemini. Claude can't make images.
3. Paste the prompt below and hit send.
4. Check every face, then share it with the family.
Try This With AI What it does: Turns one photo into a single image of you across 15 decades, same face, different everything else.
"Act as a portrait photographer and costume historian. Using the photo I've uploaded, create ONE 16:9 image: a grid of 15 head-and-shoulders portraits of this exact same person, 5 across and 3 down, one per decade from the 1880s to the 2020s, each with a small decade label. Keep the face, bone structure, skin tone, and expression exactly as in my photo. Don't make me younger, older, or more glamorous. Change only clothing, hair, background, lighting, and photo style, using this guide: 1880s sepia studio portrait, high collar. 1890s Victorian cabinet card. 1900s soft-focus Edwardian. 1910s grainy black and white. 1920s Jazz Age, art deco hint. 1930s dramatic Hollywood studio light. 1940s wartime tailoring, high contrast. 1950s faded early color. 1960s saturated Kodachrome. 1970s warm faded film, wide collars. 1980s bold fashion, bright flash. 1990s disposable-camera grain. 2000s flat early digital. 2010s smartphone portrait, soft blur. 2020s natural light, everyday clothes. If any face drifts from my photo, fix it before you finish."
Customize it: Swap any line in the guide for the look you want, like "1970s: [my old leisure suit]." Want it more Halloween? Add: "Make each one a full period costume with props." |
If it does not work: Later panels may stop looking like you, or the labels come out as gibberish. Reply: "Redo the [decade] panel and match my original photo exactly." Still drifting? Ask for 6 decades, and drop the labels.
What this doesn't fix: These are AI's best guesses at each era, not history. And you're uploading your face, so check the setting that lets your chats train the model first.
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NEWS YOU CAN USE
This Matters at Home
Short, practical summaries to help you stay updated on recent AI news—and what it means for everyday life.
🤳 AI can read your biological age from a single selfie. Mass General Brigham's FaceAge tool estimates it from one photo, and the gap tracked with cancer survival. Smokers' faces aged the most.
🎨 Canva just built its own AI image generator. Its new Craft model plans the layout before it draws, so text actually looks like text. It's in the Dream Lab tab for every Canva user.
💼 An AI company will pay a human writer up to $345,000. Anthropic's AI can draft a speech in seconds, yet it's hiring a human executive writer. Turns out judgment, not typing speed, is the scarce part.
🩺 Microsoft's AI beat doctors 83% to 36% on tough cases. In a simulation using hard medical journal cases, it outscored doctors working alone. Real hospital testing comes next, so keep your physician for now.
📝 English teachers worry far more about AI cheating than math teachers. In a survey of 222 high school teachers, 84% of English teachers were concerned, compared with 55% of math teachers.
REAL WORLD
How We Used AI This Week
Real people, real uses—here’s how AI is quietly making life better, one small win at a time.
📅 Mary B. from Englewood, Ohio, has made a family calendar of birthdays and anniversaries for 25 families for more than 30 years. For 2027 she wanted a fresh theme, so she asked Google Gemini to create an image for each month. February had to show Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, Super Bowl Sunday and Presidents' Day in one picture. It took some tinkering to get all 12 months the way she liked, but it went far faster than making the artwork herself, and 25 families get a new look next year.
READER POLL
Be honest. Could you tell an AI-written review from a real one?
TOOLS FOR YOU
🔊 Tool Spotlight: ElevenLabs Sound Effects
Need a creaky door for the front porch tonight? ElevenLabs is best known for AI voices, but its sound effects generator makes a sound from a plain description, like "a slow creaking door, then a low groan." You get a few versions to pick from and download. The free plan covers about 50 sounds a month for personal use. Play one through a Bluetooth speaker when the doorbell rings. Start here.
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