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💦 Get ready for another big week in AI. Let’s dive in and make a Splash.
HERE’S WHAT’S IN THIS ISSUE:
🎯 ChatGPT camera trick builds trip outfits before you overpack
💼 Why AI skills pay 56% more and how to prove you have them
⚠️ Sneaky way AI is making you worse at thinking (and how to fight back)
🤯 LinkedIn founder built an AI clone of himself and sent it to 75 speeches
🛠️ Fill out any form by talking, free, no typing required
🫠 Drones with fire hoses change firefighting forever
First, let’s exercise our noggins. Before last night’s Game 1 even tipped off, someone asked ChatGPT to predict the entire NBA Finals, Knicks versus Spurs, down to every single score.
🏀 ChatGPT went all-in on one team to hoist the trophy. Which team did it pick to win the whole thing? A) The New York Knicks in six, B) The San Antonio Spurs in six, C) The San Antonio Spurs in seven or D) The Knicks in a sweep, because the AI was clearly a Jalen Brunson fan. Make your best guess, then travel to the end for the right answer.
✅ Tiny housekeeping favor: Peek in your spam or promotions folder. If I’m hiding there, move me to your inbox and mark me safe. Even inbox robots need a little training. — Kim
🎯 YOUR AI POWER MOVE
Let AI judge your outfits
Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
🙋♀️ Hi, my name is Kim and despite visiting 37 different countries, I am a crappy packer.
But I found a fix. I now ask ChatGPT for help. I laid my clothes on the bed, took photos and said, “Here’s the pile. Turn this into outfits before I overpack, underpack or spiral.” The result is that pic above.
AI is not Anna Wintour. AI’s patient enough to do the annoying pattern matching my brain refuses to do.
🧳 Do this before your trip
Open ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Grok and paste this:
You’re my pro travel outfit strategist. I’ll upload photos of clothes, shoes, bags and accessories I like. Turn them into a practical outfit plan, so I don’t overpack, underpack or wear the same thing every day.
Trip details (destination, dates, length)
Weather: Look up the forecast and factor it in
Laundry access: [yes/no/unknown]
Luggage limit: [carry-on only/checked bag]
Activities: [beach, dinners, hiking, work meetings, sightseeing, Pilates, running, etc.]
Dress codes: [restaurants, events, work, workout, etc.]
After I upload the photos, create an image plan of “10 outfit ideas.” For each outfit, include the pieces, best occasion and a short caption. Then tell me what to cut, what’s missing and which pieces mix the best.
Done for me. Barry will pack one bag in three minutes. It’ll have two pairs of swim trunks, a wool sport coat and nothing that goes with either. The AI has its work cut out.
📩 Send this to the person who packs seven tops, three pairs of shoes and still wears the airport hoodie all week.
What if AI handled your job search tonight?
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AIApply helps you apply faster, smarter, and at scale so you can focus on what actually matters: getting hired.
💼 YOUR AI EDGE
AI quietly is a career filter
One day your résumé says campaign management, reporting, stakeholder comms, content calendars. Normal stuff. Then you open a job description, and suddenly the same role wants AI-assisted workflows, prompt development, automated reporting and “familiarity with emerging tools,” which is HR for “please know the thing we barely understand.”
The temptation is to panic-add “ChatGPT expert” to LinkedIn and hope nobody asks follow-up questions. Stop.
💽 Don’t say you use AI
Everyone uses AI. People also use email. Congratulations on surviving the login screen.
According to PwC, workers with AI skills get paid 56% more. Microsoft and LinkedIn found 66% of leaders said they wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills, and 71% said they’d rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.
Learn the tools that map to actual work.
ChatGPT and Claude for drafting, brainstorming, interview prep, quick workflow design, long documents, rewriting, summaries and messy thinking
Gemini if your job lives in Google Docs, Gmail, Sheets and Drive
Microsoft Copilot if your life is Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Teams
Perplexity for research with citations
NotebookLM for turning PDFs, notes and documents into briefings
Canva AI for presentations and social posts that don’t look like they were assembled during a hostage negotiation
🔨 Prove you can use AI
Paste this into your favorite AI chatbot:
Act as a career strategist and AI workflow consultant. My current role is: [paste job title, industry and responsibilities].
Target job description: [paste job description].
Identify 7 ways AI could improve my work without coding. For each, give me the task, current manual process, AI-assisted process, best tool to try, human review step, measurable business result and a LinkedIn-friendly skill phrase. Keep it realistic. Don’t exaggerate.
Your move this week: Pick a repeat task boring enough to be valuable (weekly report, client recap, sales prep, etc.). Run it through two tools. Then you can speak to how you use AI for real.
📩 Send this to someone whose AI skillset stops at asking ChatGPT how to word an email to not sound mean.
📻 MY NATIONAL RADIO & YOUTUBE SHOW
📺 Watch now or later
Robots are boxing, Alexa is getting a little too personal and AI may be better at IVF than humans. Welcome to the future, friend. It’s weird in here.
Also: AI data centers turning electricians into six-figure MVPs, Meta quietly changing Instagram encryption, Google Drive scams that look painfully legit and the $650,000 Transformer-style robot every billionaire absolutely doesn’t need.
Plus, a father asks whether his 13-year-old should get a webcam, a sister’s $700,000 romance scam warning and a woman who livestreams her entire life 24/7
Hit play below so you know what everyone else is talking about 👇
🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.
⚠️ THE AI TRAP
Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
Lazy brain tax
It’s happening to me. I go to answer an email and think, “I’ll have Claude do it.”
When AI does the thinking, your brain offloads the task and doesn’t fully clock back in. That can make you slower, less creative and more dependent.
It's the mental equivalent of always taking the elevator. Your brain is a muscle. Use it or lose it.
🧠 It’s called cognitive offloading
Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Oxford and UCLA found it may take only about 10 minutes of AI help for performance to drop once the help disappears. Researchers gave people reading and math problems. One group worked normally. The other got help from an AI chatbot, then lost access midway through.
People who relied on AI performed about 20% worse than those who worked solo from the start. They were nearly twice as likely to skip questions instead of muscling through them.
Very “my calculator died, I no longer know math.”
📱 Don’t quit AI, use it differently
Ask for hints before answers. Draft your own response first, then let AI tighten it. Use your phone for memory support, not memory replacement: voice memo the idea, snap the receipt, set the location reminder.
The device stealing your brain can help you train it. You have to be the one driving.
📩 Send this to someone who blames their age every time they lose their keys.
🧠 SMART STEALS OF THE WEEK
As an Amazon Associate, some links pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. Keeps this newsletter free. Thank you.
⚡ Little gadgets, big upgrades
Tech that makes life easier.
🖨️ Pocket-size creativity: Sticker printer (52% off, $22)
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Image: Nelko
👓 Eye spy relief: These best-selling blue light glasses (50% off, $16) help reduce screen fatigue. Lightweight and comfy enough to wear all day.
Portable office: A foldable keyboard (21% off, $63) gives you a full-size setup on the go. Switch between your laptop, tablet and phone with a click.
🔌 Power hub: Tessan’s charger block (23% off, $13) turns one plug into four and adds three USB ports. Perfect for cramped desks and nightstands.
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💻 Need a new machine? Browse my handpicked laptop & desktop recs here.
🤯 “I HAD NO IDEA”
Image: ChatGPT/@reidhoffman via YouTube
Your boss has a stunt double
That guy above? That’s Reid Hoffman. Technically.
The LinkedIn cofounder built an AI twin of himself, trained on 22 years of his books, speeches, podcasts and articles. The result, Reid AI, has delivered 75 speeches and presentations since 2024 while the real Hoffman did ... something else.
The twin speaks in nine languages with accurate lip sync, fields live questions and gives the exact answers Hoffman would give. It’s even had a conversation with a younger version of itself, trained only on data before 2004.
Hoffman’s not the only one (or two). Executives are building AI replicas trained on their own archives, letting the twins handle public-facing appearances while the human focuses elsewhere. It’s not a gimmick. It’s a product category. And it’s growing fast.
🤖 What you didn’t know
The orchestra kicks off with whatever training info you give them. A language model pulls from that material. A voice model nails the sound. A video avatar makes the face and mouth movement.
I made a picture for you to help you get it.
Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
The tech is going to get crazier. Two popular AI avatar video platforms, Synthesia and HeyGen, raised $180 million and $60 million, respectively.
👾 Bosses you’re not looking for
If an AI version discusses pay, layoffs, strategy or policy, is that official? Who approved it? Who fixes it if it gets something wrong?
My rule: If the clone can’t sign the contract, approve the budget or take the blame, it shouldn’t pretend to be the boss when those things are on the table.
The AI VP may be more available, prepared and responsive than the real one. Funny, until you realize it replaces pretending the VP would show up.
“Who is this person again?”
You’ve had that moment. Walking into a call, scrolling through old emails, trying to remember what you promised. Lindy texts you a brief 15 minutes before: attendee context, past discussions, open items, talking points. All pulled automatically. Try Lindy free.
🛠️ YOUR TOOL OF THE WEEK
Image: @ChatGPTapp via X
📋 ChatGPT forms by voice
WHAT IT DOES: Upload a form, talk through your answers, and ChatGPT turns the mess into clean, copy-ready form text. Glamorous? No. Useful? Very.
WHAT IT’S FOR: Membership forms, school paperwork, reimbursement requests, intake forms, registrations, volunteer applications, HOA nonsense. Low-stakes adult life, basically.
PRICE: Free ChatGPT accounts can use image uploads, file uploads and voice, but limits change with demand. Plus is $20/month and gives higher limits.
HOW TO USE IT:
Go to chatgpt.com or open the ChatGPT app.
Upload the form with the paper clip, camera or file button.
Use the mic or voice button to dictate.
Then say:
I’m uploading a form. Read every field and help me fill it out from my voice answers. Do not guess missing information. If a field is unclear, ask me. If something looks legally, financially or medically important, flag it for manual review. Return the answers in form order, plus a short checklist of anything missing. For dates, use MM/DD/YYYY. List every field you filled and every field you left blank.
Then dictate naturally. For checkboxes, be painfully clear: Select annual membership, not monthly.
THE CATCH: Privacy. Forms collect birth dates, addresses, IDs, medical details and payment info like tiny bureaucratic gluttons. Data could be used to improve models. Temporary Chat isn’t saved to history or used for training, but OpenAI says it may keep chats up to 30 days for safety. Also, it can misread handwriting, bad scans, faint checkboxes and weird PDFs.
🫠 WTF (WHAT THE FUTURE)?
Image: @MarioNawfal via X
🚒 Ladder day saints
High-rise fires have one very obvious problem: Ladders end.
Enter firefighting drones. Flying rigs built to carry hoses, aim water and attack flames from the outside without sending a human up into the danger zone first. One Shenzhen test reportedly pushed water up over 1,000 feet, which is officially “scared to look down” territory.
The upside is huge: faster response, fewer firefighters in the blast zone and help in places trucks can’t reach. The downside? Wind, battery life, water pressure and the terrifying phrase “robot with a fire hose.”
Watch the action here. I showed this to a firefighter friend and he summed it up best, “Just like war, you still have to have boots on the ground.”
🎬 END OF PROMPT
The answer: B) The San Antonio Spurs in six. The AI didn’t stop at a winner. Victor Wembanyama went into the series as the -185 favorite for Finals MVP.
🎰 The Knicks haven’t won a title since 1973. The Spurs haven’t been to the Finals since 2014. Whether ChatGPT is a total baller or really good at reading Vegas lines, we’ll know in about two weeks. Save this. Check back. We’re keeping receipts.
WHAT YOU LEARNED TODAY:
You know how to use AI as a packing editor before your next trip. You know why AI skills show up on paychecks, not résumés. You know cognitive offloading is real, and there’s a simple fix. You know one of the most powerful people in tech has an AI twin doing his job. You know how to fill out any form without touching a keyboard. And you know firefighting drones are operational and slightly terrifying.
That’s not a bad 10 minutes.
🚀 Send this to one person who needs to stop watching AI from the sidelines. Thanks for diving in, see you next time! Oh drop a rating and a comment, I read every single one! — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
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Photo credit(s): ChatGPT, Kim Komando, Nelko, @reidhoffman via YouTube, @ChatGPTapp via X, @MarioNawfal via X
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