AI isn’t scary if you use it for puppy pics & poems

By Lethbridge Herald on September 26, 2025.

Al Beeber
Leave It To Beeber

By now a large percentage of our population has surely heard about the artificial intelligence tool ChatGTP.

It’s everywhere and is being used for a wide variety of purposes, from creating written missives to providing answers to user questions.

We’re hearing more about AI, its positives and potential negatives. Is it a help, a hindrance or a combination of both?

Until my son downloaded it on a new iPhone on the weekend, I hadn’t considered using it in my own life. I’m a writer, after all, I don’t need an app to do what I do. If I have questions on subjects, I do my own research to find the answers.

What intrigued me about ChatGTP on the weekend was not the information it could readily provide me but a fun little application it could do which I was all into after Dylan showed me it could use AI to create a different version of his Subaru WRX.

Immediately, of course, I looked at Diana and Izz, who are always at my side, and the giant lightbulb inside my skull immediately switched on.

What could ChatGTP do with photos of them? Well, I decided to find out because in the seriousness of life, we all need to have a little fun. And with ChatGTP, did I discover levity! Submit a photo, ask a question and in a couple of short minutes, I saw Diana and Izzy like I could never have imagined.

Diana, in a photo with a new doggie hoodie she immediately hated, turned into full hoodlum – the kind of chihuahua you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark street late at night. Seven pounds of doe-eyed malice who would mug you and leave you on the ground in a daze just for a nibble of that cheeseburger in your hand or the cheese on a plate. Not the Diana who wears pink sweaters on cool days and won’t let a stranger – or even people she sees every day – come close because they’re not her daddy.

And Izzy, who in the right light can present a shadow that resembles a certain superhero in Gotham City, turned into Batman – or rather Batgirl, I guess – guarding the deck from the comfort of a well-padded lawn chair.

It’s absolutely hilarious what ChatGTP can do. I asked it to make me look like a hippie and voila, long hair, a tie-dyed shirt and round tinted wire-rimmed glasses – which I actually wore in the early 1990s – and I looked like I should have been selling hemp hoodies and beads at Woodstock as Carlos Santana and so many others played on a distant stage.

But there’s a dark side to AI as I began thinking: if it can create photos that are so realistic, how do we know what is real and what is fake? The fact that ChatGTP trimmed my eyebrows that grow quicker than a lawn after a rainstorm was proof enough for me the photo wasn’t real. But what about for someone else?

Unless there is some type of disclaimer attached to images, or perhaps even essays that are created, how can we actually know that the image is real or the article created by someone sitting at a keyboard before dawn with a yawning chihuahua at their foot like this one?

That’s concerning to me, because AI really seems to blur the line between real and fake from my limited use of it. How much AI is being used in the world now and how much is being passed off as real by people who take the easy way of doing things and let it do their work?

Here’s a prime example: I asked ChatGTP to write a two-verse song about a chihuahua as I was writing this column. In less than 15 seconds, it came up with this:

“Little paws tapping down the street,

Big brown eyes and a heat that beats,

Small in size but brave and loud,

Struts along, standing proud.

Wrapped in blankets, snug and warm,

Dreams of chasing through the storm,

Tiny hero, full of cheer,

A mighty bark for all to hear.

Then the app asked me if I wanted it to create a chorus which went like this:

Chihuahua, king of the town,

Tiny legs that won’t back down,

Tail held high, she runs the show

The smallest dog with the biggest soul.

That took less time than a scratch of the eyebrows to create. And after asking me if I wanted the tune to be “cute and bouncy like a children’s song,” it immediately created another version. Quicker than the time it took to write the last sentence here.

That’s not only bizarre it’s almost disturbing. I’m a creative person but not speed-of-light creative.

I do like the songs, though. Perfect for little Lady Di.

Share this story: