Good morning.
I use AI for plenty of things that actually save me time: drafting, planning, the boring stuff. Every so often I use it for something that saves no time at all, and that's the whole point of this list. Try one tonight and see which one gets you.
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AI TUTORIAL
The Best Pointless (and Wonderful) Things to Ask AI
Imagine game night. The ranch-versus-ketchup debate has been raging for ten minutes, nobody is backing down, and someone finally grabs their phone just to end it. Forty minutes later, the ranch question is long forgotten. You are turning the whole fight into a meme, listening to AI narrate a movie trailer for Saturday's grocery run, and laughing harder than you have in weeks.
That is not a fluke. In Harvard Business Review's 2025 research on how people actually use generative AI, "fun and nonsense" lands as one of the top ten reported uses, right alongside writing emails and planning trips. People are not only asking AI to be productive. They are asking it to be ridiculous.
Good. This one is about giving yourself permission to do the same. No goal, no output to save, no productivity angle to defend. Five ways to waste ten minutes in the most entertaining way possible.
Idea 1: Let AI Settle the Debate Nobody Can Win
Every family has one. The condiment debate. The "which decade had better music" argument. The annual fight over how to load a dishwasher correctly. Open any AI tool and lay out both sides. Ask for a verdict, not a summary.
"Act as a neutral judge with zero patience for wishy-washy answers. Settle this debate: [describe both sides]. Pick a winner and give two sentences of reasoning. No hedging."
If the first verdict feels too soft, push back. Tell it to defend the losing side and rule again. AI folds under a hard argument about as often as your brother-in-law does.
Idea 2: Turn Your Weekend Into a Movie Trailer, Then Make It Real
Nothing on your calendar this weekend is more dramatic than a Costco run and a load of laundry. Let AI fix that. Feed it your actual plans and ask for the Hollywood treatment.
"Act as a movie trailer narrator. Turn these weekend plans into an over-the-top two-paragraph action movie trailer: [list your plans]. Full drama, full stakes, no restraint."
Read it out loud at dinner. Someone will laugh so hard they choke on their salad.
Want to go one step further? Text-to-video tools like Galaxy.ai can turn that script into an actual short video instead of just words on a screen. A mundane errand list becomes something you can actually watch and send to the family group chat.
Idea 3: Turn Today Into a Meme
This is the single most common example people give when asked how they actually use AI for fun. Not a story, not a project. Just memes. Feed it something real and ordinary from your day and let it make the joke.
"Act as a meme caption writer. Take this real moment from today: [describe it]. Give me three short, punchy meme captions, the kind you'd actually send in a family group chat."
You don't need design software or a clever eye. You just need one dumb, true thing that happened today.
Idea 4: Get AI to Write a Poem About You
This is a real, well-documented favorite, not a guess. Give it real specifics: name, hometown, a hobby, a nickname, one specific memory. The more detail, the better it lands.
"Act as a poet with real range. Write a short poem about me using these details: [your name, hometown, a hobby, a nickname, one specific memory or quirk]. Make it feel personal, not generic."
Once you have it, ask ElevenLabs to read it back to you in a warm, dramatic voice. Hearing it out loud hits differently than reading it on a screen.
Idea 5: Invent a Completely Fake Piece of History
This one has an actual fan base. There's a real Instagram account, absurdfakehistory, built entirely around this bit: wildly specific, completely made-up history delivered with total sincerity. Point it at something ordinary.
"Act as a deadpan historian. Invent a completely fake, wildly specific piece of history about [any everyday object or place, like your kitchen table or your street]. Present it as fact, with a fake date and a straight face."
The deadpan delivery is what makes it funny. AI does not know it is being ridiculous, and that is the whole bit.
None of this saves you time. None of it belongs on a to-do list. That is the whole appeal.
AI's job description keeps stretching in both directions. Business plans one day. A dead-serious argument about whether a hot dog is a sandwich the next. Only one of those tends to end in consensus, and it's rarely the business plan.
If today's five weren't enough, we've got a similar batch of zero-stakes ideas in Four Fun Things Worth Trying With ChatGPT's New Image Tool, same energy, using images instead of words.
This week: open a new chat and try one of these five. Two minutes. Guaranteed laugh.
READER POLL
What would you ask AI to do first?
WHERE TO GO NEXT
More on this topic, from sources worth your time:
Everyday Entertainment Prompts for Music, Movies & Books. A running library of copy-paste prompts for whenever you want AI to just be fun.
Galaxy.ai. One login gets you access to thousands of AI models and tools, including text-to-video, so you can actually turn today's trailer script into a video.
ElevenLabs. Turn any script, including a poem about yourself, into a realistic voice narration you can actually play out loud.
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