The Download #009
January 17th, 2025
Dear Reader,
I’ll wager the winter holidays seem very far away, even though we’re only two weeks into the new year! I hope you had some time and space to rest and relax. We spent the time discovering new places while geocaching, watching the highly enjoyable new Wallace & Gromit (Netflix) film and The Secret Lives of Animals (Apple TV+) series, and miraculously didn’t overstuff ourselves on Roscón de Reyes.
This week: I’ve made a GPT to make your prompt creation easier, tested out OpenAI’s text-to-video model SORA and more.
Let’s get to it.
GPT of the Week: Prompto
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks creating and testing a tool that I would most like to use - something to help my prompts more effective. We all know the saying “Garbage In, Garbage Out”, right? Well, it’s the same with prompting.
There are guides a-plenty on the right kinds of prompts to use (even my own), but what’s the next logical step forward from that? Prompting AI to create the prompts for you.
I want 2025 to be the year that you all start creating your own GPTs to help do your heavy lifting, and ‘Prompto’ is perfectly poised to assist. Do you want a GPT that can help you learn a new language? Or help come up with family meal plans? Just tell Prompto.
Prompto will then give you the output you need to paste into a new chat window, or even create your own new GPT to help you assist with just that (Plans are already in the works to streamline it to work with other AI models so you won’t have to copy and paste).
Check out the video trailer I’ve made above or on YouTube, and give Prompto a whirl (and if you like it, please consider leaving it a review!).
Review: Test Driving Sora, Open AI’s Text-to-Video Model
Curious about AI-generated video? I’ve taken a look at OpenAI’s Sora, a tool that turns text prompts into short video clips, to see it’s strengths, limitations, and potential applications.
Setups: My Generative AI Setup for 2025
The tools I rely on daily—ChatGPT, DALL-E, Whisper, Custom GPTs, MidJourney, and Claude. I share how I’ve integrated each tool into my workflow to boost productivity and streamline creative tasks. If you’re looking for inspiration on where to get started with AI, this can give you a few ideas.
Pages: The Art of Rubber Duck Debugging
The concept of “rubber duck debugging” in programming illustrates how verbalising a problem can lead to its solution, embodying a key aspect of thinking like a coder. This technique, where programmers explain their code to an inanimate object, often reveals logical flaws and overlooked solutions, demonstrating the power of articulation in problem-solving.
Elsewhere
- Mistral and AFP Collaborate on Fact-Based Chatbot: French AI startup Mistral has partnered with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to incorporate over 2,000 AFP news articles daily into its chatbot, Le Chat, aiming to provide accurate and verified information. (Link FT Paywall)
- AI in Gmail and Google Docs Will Be Free: There’s a small $2 a month price hike on Google Workspace plans, but no more paying $20 a month for Gemini. (Link)
- H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know: provides an in-depth analysis of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, discussing its history, transmission, potential to cause a human pandemic, and the associated risks. (Link)
- 52 things I learned in 2024 Here’s a year’s worth of sourced Monday morning meeting ice-breakers including: “Your bathroom tiles might have neanderthal body parts embedded in them.” and “The London Underground has a distinct form of mosquito.” (Link)
- Things we learned about LLMs in 2024 reviews significant advancements in large language models over the past year, including surpassing GPT-4 capabilities, reduced costs, increased multimodal functionalities, and the emergence of models capable of running on personal devices. (Link)
- You can now run scheduled tasks in ChatGPT: Could this be the real start of agentive AI? (Link)
Did you know?
A bunch of lava lamps are helping to keep the internet safe:
Next week
I’m looking forward to digging into ChatGPT’s Task feature that started rolling out recently. Plus, I’m beta testing another new GPT that I can’t wait to tell you all about.
Don’t forget that if you like The Download, you can always forward this on to a friend and encourage them to sign up ;-)
Jim
Made with ❤️ in Valencia by Jim Christian. For feedback, please reach out to [email protected].
