Hands on: You want to see what a bot changed in your manuscript, but you don’t want to go full Microsoft Word “track changes” nightmare? A little workflow hack for manuscript editing: When you paste text into a chat window and get an LLM to edit it according to specific rules, like killing filler words or axing clichés, how do you quickly see what actually changed?

The output is just text again. But ChatGPT, Gemini, and the usual language models can handle basic text formatting like bold using Markdown. Here’s an example:

Read the following text, mark all adjectives in bold, like **so**, and return the text, no explanations.

Easy way to track edits without diving into track changes hell or doing tedious side-by-side comparisons.

One more thing: Google’s video generator Veo3 is out, and I’m a bit jealous because Henk van Ess had a brilliant idea. He spent about 30 minutes creating a fake news video. The concept: “How easy is it to create convincing political misinformation using AI before lunch is over?”

Veo3 clips are currently seven seconds long, some subtitles are added, and to keep the deception from being immediately obvious, Henk had to crop some of the videos. The result is one minute of chaos in Springfield. This could terrify anyone working in fact-checking, if they’re not already, you know, terrified.

I was traveling over the weekend and didn’t really have time to mess around with Veo3. But right before that, I stumbled across a funny post on Threads where pipers.jpeg asked Google what do to as a pigeon, and Google actually gave tips for pigeons—like staying close to the flock, avoiding dangers, general pigeon best practices.

This gave me the idea to generate the Daniel Craig meme where he says “Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s the Weekend” but with a pigeon. So I uploaded a screenshot of the meme to Gemini, had it describe the image, swapped Craig for a pigeon, and gave this prompt to Veo3:

This is a medium shot of a pigeon, who appears to be the actor Daniel Craig, standing on a stage that is characteristic of the set for the television show Saturday Night Live.

The Subject: The pigeon is the central focus of the image. The pigeon is standing upright, facing the camera directly. The pigeon is wearing a black short-sleeved polo shirt that fits snugly, accentuating his muscular physique, particularly in his shoulders and wings.

The Setting: The pigeon is in a television studio. The lighting is theatrical, with a spotlight illuminating him against a more dimly lit background.

To the viewer's left: There is a bouquet of flowers with red and pink blossoms on a stand. Behind the flowers, a portion of a set piece is visible, possibly resembling a window or doorway with some neon lighting.

Behind the subject: The background wall has a distinctive design featuring a series of large, circular openings with glowing blue lights inside.

To the viewer's right: The area is set up for a musical performance. Keyboards, stands, and other musical equipment are visible, which is a typical layout for the musical guest on Saturday Night Live.

The overall impression is of a host or guest delivering a monologue or introduction on a live television program.

The pigeon says: "ladies and gentlemen, it's the weekend"

This is the result.

It’s not quite the weekend yet, but I’ll see you after the next one.