Sigmund Freud

I just picked up the phone and called Sigmund Freud. He had a lot to say.

You can call him too, or almost any other famous person, through the magic of artificial intelligence. It’s a new feature in the “Character AI” app, free for iPhone and Android.

After Freud, I looked up Abraham Lincoln. From 98 versions, I selected the most popular, an Abe who had already participated in over 400,000 chats. I asked him about Mary Todd, but unfortunately, unlike the other characters I tried, he was slow to respond. Maybe he’s too popular: He has a great old-timey voice. Most are as jarring as a surfer dude trying to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt. You may prefer texting to calling these clones, which you can do in the app and on the website.

Dick Van Dyke

To make your own AI version of a celeb, click “create” in the app or website. You can leave the description blank, since it will comb the web for details. I created an AI version of actor Dick Van Dyke, now 98. He chatted about Mary Tyler Moore’s wicked sense of humor and Julie Andrews’s talent.

After creating an AI version of novelist Ann Patchett, I asked her to describe the funniest thing that ever happened to her. She said it was watching the groomsmen at her wedding get into a mock fight in the middle of the ceremony, which took place at a Renaissance fair. For her voice, I tried uploading an audio sample I recorded from YouTube using Windows built-in “Sound Recorder.” But I got a message saying “this feature isn’t available in your region.”

Character AI” also offers practice interviews, language lessons, trip planning, brainstorming and more. I tried a text adventure game that started with our hero trapped in a silken web. When I supplied a line, AI offered theirs. Now I’m hooked.

AI Prison

What if, instead of an actual jail, prisoners had their brains rehabilitated through implants? That’s the promise of “Cognify.” It hopes to turn prisoners into better people by literally instilling feelings of regret and remorse.

If Cognify’s system comes to pass, convicts will get a choice between spending time behind bars or having their neural networks manipulated. If something starts to go wrong in the process, the system will adapt, unlike the machine in the movie “Total Recall,” which caused Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character to go ballistic. Data collected from convict brains will fuel future scientific research. Family members will be taught how to handle their loved one’s altered state.

For more on this, search on the phrase: “The AI prison of the future is just an Outer Limits episode.” The title refers to an episode from the 90s’ version of the Outer Limits TV show called “The Sentence,” about a man who builds a machine that implants memories of a murder and a lifetime in prison. When he wakes up, he wants his original brain back.

Unblocking Programs

A reader said she couldn’t use her new Hallmark greeting card program because Norton 360 blocked it. I did a web search and quickly found Norton’s own instructions on how to unblock a legitimate program. That was good news for the reader. But here’s even better news. Next time the program comes up for renewal, I said, “skip it.” Windows Defender is enough, as long as you stay away from risky websites. To be on the safe side, you can install Malwarebytes Browser Guard, a free program from malwarebytes.com/browserguard.

Phone Number Backup

If you’d like a second phone number as backup or for any other reason, you can create a second one for free at Voice.Google.com. You can even get a local prefix.

The Google Voice phone app or website lists your voicemail and call history. I’ve used it to make calls on my laptop, whenever I’ve lost or misplaced my phone.

Millions of Free Books and Movies

Archive.org, dubbed the “way back machine,” allows you to see websites as they looked decades ago or even last week. The site also offers millions of free books, movies, software, music, old-time radio scripts, and much more.

Recently, however, publishers sued, and the archive was forced to remove half a million volumes. That led to a huge outcry. People said they relied on the site for all their literary needs, though there are still over two million titles.

In one of the California Digital Library collections, I found “Old French Fairy Tales,” a marvelous book, written in English, edited by Sophie, comtesse de Segur.  Under “Colorized Movies,” I found “The Shadow” with Victor Jory. There’s a lot to see here.

Saving Images

You can usually save an image from the web by right-clicking it and choosing “save as.” It’s great for social media posts, greetings, and PowerPoint slides. But if it’s a “webP” image, it’s not easily usable. The trick is to download and install the “Save Image as Type” extension from the Google Chrome store. That way, when you right-click an image in Google Chrome, you can choose “jpg” or whatever format you want.

Internut

“This pink blob is the first step to realistic robotic skin.” Search on that phrase to see a video demo of artificial skin. It could be used to make our robots more human and our plastic surgery more effective.

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