Or, depending on your chatbot, you might even be able to go one step further, and just ask it to convert the image directly into an “ics” file for importing directly into a calendar.
We’ve not had a lot of luck with this, however. Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot straight out refuse to create files for us (probably for good reason), and instead give us the contents of the ics file, together with instructions on how to create the file ourselves.
It’s no faster than the first method I mentioned.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s ChatGPT thinks it has created an ics file for us, but it hasn’t really. The file is impossible to download.
But don’t despair! With the advent of Copilot+ PCs in coming weeks, which will run AI chatbots locally rather than in the cloud, we suspect it will start to get easier to create simple files like this using AI.
It might only save you a few minutes a day. Or it might save you turning up to a wedding an hour or a week late because you’ve mis-typed the calendar entry.
Locked PDFs
For every person who thinks it’s a good idea to send invitations only as jpeg files, there’s some other numbskull out there who thinks it’s a good idea to create PDF files with text in them that can’t be highlighted for easy copying-and-pasting into other documents.
OK, so it’s not only numbskulls who do this. There are also good legal and policy reasons for creating PDFs with copying disabled.
Also, some tools for creating PDFs that have both text and images in them will “rasterise” the text by default, turning it into a graphical image that can no longer be read as text by your computer.
But all of those good reasons for sending copy-protected PDFs, as well as the bad ones, are rendered moot in the AI era.
Just drag the offending PDF into your chatbot, ask it to convert it to text, and voilà!
Image-to-text recognition is one of the most established technologies in AI, so the results will usually be flawless.
Spreadsheet formulas
AI companies are always blathering on about how good their technology is at writing software code, to the point where those of us who don’t write software feel like we should write software, just so we’re not missing out on all that time saving.
But spreadsheet formulas are code, too, you know, and getting them right can be just as tricky.
You can Google spreadsheet formulas, for sure, but what AI chatbots excel at (pardon the pun) is creating complex formulas that take multiple functions and combine them all together in the one cell, in combinations you would never find from a simple Google search.
For instance, you can ask your AI chatbot to create a formula that calculates what week it is, treating Monday as the first day of the week. The chatbot will tell you the formula is “=WEEKNUM(TODAY(), 2)“.
Then you can tell the chatbot to take that formula, and, say, divide the sum of column B by it. So now the chatbot amends the formula to “=SUM(B:B) / WEEKNUM(TODAY(), 2)“, which gives you an average weekly spend that ticks over on a Monday. Whatever.
Keep iterating like that, taking the formula and adding into yet another, and in no time you’ll have sophisticated code in your spreadsheets that works like a charm, even if you don’t understand a word of it.
Read the fine print
It’s always a little worrisome when anyone uses AI chatbots to summarise something they otherwise would have read themselves.
An AI summary of The Great Gatsby might tell you the storyline, for instance, but it’s no substitute for reading it yourself. It will never capture the essence of the book, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s turn of phrase will never find its way into your own writing.
But what about summarising things we never would have read, not ever?That’s when AI can dispense its starlight*, and smarten us up instead of dumbing us down.
Take strata inspection reports, for instance.
They can run to 500 pages or more. No human who’s not getting paid to read them is ever going to read them.
And yet, hidden within their tedious bylaws and endless strata committee meeting minutes could be that precious nugget of information you need, the oblique reference to some costly defect or dispute with the neighbours that means you should never buy an apartment, nor even rent one, in that building you were considering.
Now, getting an AI chatbot to read through the document for you, and summarise the defects, noise problems, water leaks, disputes and zoning issues mentioned therein, probably won’t be free.
Most chatbots charge a premium for versions that allow you to upload and summarise big files like that.
But it could save you the $1000-plus expense of getting a conveyancer to pore over it, and, speaking of boring, it could save you from the million-dollar mistake of buying into a building that’s about to get a tunnel under it.
It could be the best $35 a month you ever spent.
*With apologies to Mr Fitzgerald.