Greetings, my dear bread lovers! Today, I’m taking you on a wild and hilarious journey to the local bakery. As someone who takes their bread very seriously (and their humor even more so), I can assure you that this is not just any ordinary trip to buy some carb-loaded goodness.

First of all, let’s talk about the excitement that comes with stepping into a bakery. The sweet aroma of freshly baked bread, pastries, and cakes is enough to make my knees weak. I mean, who needs a romantic partner when you have a warm and fluffy baguette, right?

So, there I was, browsing through the shelves and admiring the various loaves on display, when I heard a voice from the back of the bakery. “Excuse me, ma’am, can I help you find something?”

Turns out, it was the baker himself, peeking out from behind a stack of trays. He was covered in flour and had a smudge of dough on his cheek. He looked like a cute, round, and friendly version of Willy Wonka, and I couldn’t resist the urge to reply in my best ‘Charlie Bucket’ impression. “Yes, please, sir. I’m looking for the bread that’s made with love and happiness.”

The baker chuckled and led me to a corner where all the different kinds of bread were displayed. “Take your time, ma’am. We have everything from sourdough to whole wheat, rye to focaccia. What’s your bread of choice today?”

I was in bread heaven! I wanted to try them all, but my budget (and my waistline) wouldn’t allow it. So, I decided to play it safe and go for a classic baguette. I mean, you can never go wrong with a classic, right?

But just as I was about to make my purchase, the baker stopped me. “Wait, wait, wait. Before you go, let me give you a little something extra. A bonus, if you will.” And with that, he handed me a small, round loaf of bread. “It’s our secret recipe,” he whispered. “It’s called a ‘surprise loaf’, and it’s filled with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Trust me, you won’t regret it.”

I was a little weirded out by the whole thing, to be honest. I mean, who gives someone a mysterious “surprise loaf” of bread? It sounded like something out of a horror movie. So, I politely declined and made my way back home, baguette in hand.

But as I sat on my couch, munching on my plain and boring baguette, I couldn’t help but think about that “surprise loaf”. Was I missing out on something truly amazing? Was it filled with hidden treasures, or was it just a trick to get me to eat something strange?

I was torn between my love for bread and my fear of the unknown. It was like an existential crisis, but with bread. In the end, I regretted not trying that “surprise loaf”. What if it was the best thing I never ate?

So, there you have it, folks. My bread-tastic adventures at the bakery, and the greatest mystery I never solved. Who says buying bread has to be boring? Not this girl! Until next time, keep calm and bake on.

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You might be surprised to learn that my latest blog post about buying bread at a bakery was actually written by a Chat bot. I simply provided some general guidelines and the Chat bot did the rest, capturing my fun and playful writing style.

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You wanna know what’s even more surprising? That confession you just read was also written by a Chatbot. ChatGPT to be exact. Don’t worry though, this is the real Kiko you’re reading right now (or is it!?).

A.I. is the future, there’s no denying that. Shit, A.I. has been in our past too! If you’ve ever played a videogame, then you’ve interacted with A.I. But what has happened just now is something different. Something weird. Something that has a lot of people worried. It’s also already messing with how we perceive things in the real world. 

“Well not me!” you say as you shove that glorious Coca-Cola down your drinkin’ hole, “I can tell the difference!” To which I say – 

“Well bless yer heart.”

You may have read about Image A.I. programs that create images just by instructions from a prompt. You may have even participated. It can actually be really fun! Type a prompt for something like “Kermit the Frog finally throat-fucking Gonzo; like in my dreams.” And the Image bot will give you several examples of what you ask for. Is it precise? Not really. In fact, you might get some horrible, nightmarish abomination that can only be described as Kermit walking around his little nephew Robin with a fucking froggy flesh-colored leash! 

Or whatever the hell this is: 

But it did come up with something Muppet-y, and that’s just the silly free version. There are more advanced versions that can do way better – for a price. That’s concerning to some. In fact, some image A.I.s are so good, they’ve won art contests. Imagine you’re an artist who put hundreds of hours into a work that lost to an A.I. that generated their art piece in a few milliseconds. How would that make you feel? Fucky, at best. 

By the way, the Main Image for this blog was created by an Image A.I. So. . . yeah.

Back to my Bakery Story. Oh wait, there is no bakery story, no jolly Baker, no existential crisis (well . . .)

ChatGPT is like the Image A.I. but with messaging and text. Did it fool you? Did it sound like me? I mean, if this is your first time reading my blog, then probably not. But did it fool you, my loyal readers? Both of you?

The ChatBot was horrifically easy to use. I just asked it to write a blog post about buying bread at a bakery in the style of Kiko Kiera. I thought to myself “Pfft. Good luck. I mean, who am I? I write a few times a year. How could it possibly know -” But before I could even finish that thought, the whole fucking blog just popped right up. My jaw dropped. If I had been drinking (weird that I wasn’t), I would’ve done an honest-to-god spit take. 

Okay, fine, I thought, so it wrote a story in seconds. But is it in my style? Do I even have a style? What is my style? So I read through it. Was it precise? Nope. But was it close? …  I honestly don’t know because I’ve never really thought about my style? 

I try to be funny. I try to be honest, and I try not to curse as much (believe me, you’re not getting the full Cursy Kiko when you read these. I turn that fucking shit all the way down.), but those are like my personal rules rather than style. I’ve been told I write in a conversational tone, so maybe that’s it? That’s mostly just a byproduct of my writing process, to be honest. When I write, it just comes out: everything does. Then I go back and delete some things I probably shouldn’t have said, but the style remains the same. 

I looked over the Bread Story and thought, this isn’t quite like me. So I asked the Chatbot to give the writer an existential crisis. That’s totally more like me.

*bloop* Up comes the same Bread Story, with the edits and additions I asked for. 

So, as it often works out, I had a little existential crisis in real life at that point. I mean, how long before we read an entire book that was written by A.I.? Wait, what? Really?!

Well shit. But it’s not like the Chatbot can pass an exam or something right?

Say what? This asshole’s already passed some fucking Law School Bar?!

Okay, okay. So was the second draft of the Bread Story any better? I mean, who’s to say? It’s not exactly me. And anyone who thought it was me I now consider my deepest enemy. But it did come up with a story. It had a rudimentary structure. It had a beginning, middle, and end. When the baker offered the mystery loaf, I have to admit, it intrigued me a bit. So the goddamn Chatbot knows how to build suspense. And all in a couple of seconds. 

But go back and reread it. Knowing what you know now, go take another look. Does it seem a bit empty? Is there a lack of humanity? Does it seem that way because you know the truth now? 

And what really blows my mind, is that this thing isn’t even doing any writing per se. All this little shit’s doing is guessing the next word. You give it a prompt, it takes clues from that prompt, scours publicly available databases online, and then guesses the appropriate answer as it painstakingly puts the response in the best readable format it can – one word at a time. It’s a bit more complicated, but that’s the gist of how it works.

Pretty neat huh? But not very human, right? I mean, when we write down something it’s not like our brains search through the databases of our mind, foraging our history of vocabulary, grammar, and past memories, and backlogs of emotional ups and downs and ecstacies and tragedies, and then put them down one word at a time. Right?  Right?! Please tell me that’s right…

It sure as hell came up with a limerick faster than I could.

The cadence is off. But still; pretty close.

What does this mean for our future? How long before every social media post is faker than it normally is?

Are there any benefits? Maybe. How many of you enjoy writing resumes? How would you like to just throw in your credentials and have the robot shit out a perfectly professional-looking resume? I guess that’s good because, y’know, fuck corporations and all. 

I’m a bit scared, and (truth be told) a bit excited too. Isn’t this what we wanted? I remember watching Star Trek and Back to the Future II, and countless other sci-fi shows and thinking, “Man, I can’t wait until the future!!”

For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m really living in the future. Sure we have little computers we carry around in our pockets we call “phones”. And we have the entirety of all human knowledge within these little computers, but that just seems like the next small step doesn’t it? If we went from rotary dial phones to my Galaxy Flip Phone, then that would be a hell of a step. But we had touch tone, then cell phones, then cell phones with small screens, then bigger screens, then fewer buttons, then no buttons, and now they can bend in half. Baby steps. 

This doesn’t feel like a baby step. It almost feels like the beginning of the internet, or rather, when the internet became widely available. I was too naive to appreciate the importance of the impact it had at the time. I feel the same about all these Chatbots and Imagebots and others. How quickly does it escalate from here? 

Or maybe it’s a fun little thingy that can’t do much else besides provide us with a little entertainment – y’know, like the internet in 1998.

I think, for now anyway, its wonders are beyond our comprehension.

And its horrors.

The entirety of my conversation with ChatGPT can be found here. 

– Kiko (as far as you can tell anyway)