Three years ago tomorrow I married the love of my life. My wife’s life-long friend, Betsy Nelson Hanzelin, officiated. In the second pic below, you’ll see me with two dudes who were there at some of the most important times in my life. To the left is my adopted brother, Brian Pitts, whose family took me in rather than let me die on the streets, and allowed me to become the McSciFi you know and love. The dude on the right is the legendary Steve Silver who always seemed to be around to stop me from doing something really stupid. I mean, he’s been clocking that job, with varying levels of success, since 1981.

Should you be so inclined, you can CLICK HERE to read the fun story of how Kim and I met, it involves the internet and booze. You can also see more pictures and videos of the most beautiful woman in the world. Now, you may disagree with that statement. In many cases, I hope you do. The human you’re with should mean far more to you than my human does to me. Love, like success, isn’t pie. There’s enough for everyone.

Those of us who work with AI know a few things at the molecular level. First, AI is not artificial intelligence. It couldn’t come within a country mile of passing the Turing Test. The programs available are glorified search engines with graphic capabilities. Some are topic specific. Whether it be science or elf lore, you can find a site built to assist your needs. Now, for the record, I have whittled my core needs down to a site known as Deerp AI.

It has a lot of advantages, including photo-realistic images of some amazing creatures, but the main perk I can see is they have a human design team that will address your concerns. Fully, not just with some mealy-mouthed boilerplate. Over seventy percent of the currently published images on my CHIMERA PAGES have been created using them. The first page shows you images by brand (species) name. The bright red link on that page will let you see them in action. Or, as a fan from Louisiana noted, “a kissin’ and a killin’.” Yes, I am using that line.

Anyway, all of that brings me to this. Most chat programs are designed to please you. During my adventures several people told me I was sleeping on ChatGPT. So, hardy soul that I am, I went over to take a peek. When presented with text related issues, ChatGPT shined. But I prefer to do my own writing. And it did get formulaic after a while. But I was there to make pretty pictures. ChatGPT can work off prompts, but its selling point is that it can work off raw data. For example, I created a detailed appendix for The Brittle Riders.

I fed the whole thing into ChatGPT and let the games begin. If you scroll down, you’ll see two images depicting the title characters in The Brittle Riders. The top one depicts ChatGPT’s take on it all. When I noted that Braarb, the Llamia/centaur hybrid, is clearly described as blond-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned, and muscular, ChatGPT informed me the Nubian goddess version, who looks awesome, fit the vibe better and was closer to my underlying meaning. Umm? WTF?

After some back and forth, I got the second image. But ChatGPT refuses to make the white woman muscular. I have no idea what the bias factor is there, but I bet there are a lot of young incels involved.

Finally, the bottom image is a hat tip to many of you. It shows the Bit.Ly click-through rate on social media for my newsletters. While the percentages may look the same for some markets, the gross numbers are wildly different. Yet, still illuminating. For example, before I started being interviewed in India to promote Goptri of the Mists, my click-through rate was less than 0.05% four months ago. So, to be at 6% now is a massive improvement.

All this interest is directly attributable to you and the wonderful humans you send my way. You all have my deepest thanks.

Until next time, stay safe and sane.