No one we can safely ignore
/If we want to welcome God into our lives, there is no one we can safely ignore.
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Your Talents
/Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade? -Benjamin Franklin (born Jan. 17, 1706)
12 Ways to Spot AI Images or Videos
/Tips for determining if an image or video is likely created by AI.
THE BACKGROUND. Are people in the background looking at the unusual thing going on? If they are going about their business, it is likely a fake. Often, the background of AI images will be distorted. Sometimes odd shapes in the background details are giveaways, such as floor tiles or walls.
OTHER VIDEOS & PHOTOS. If the video or image is of a news event and there are no other videos or images showing different angles, it may be AI-generated. It is unlikely that there would be only a single image or video of something odd or newsworthy.
DETAILS. AI generators are not good at details—like fingers, hands and hair. Many times, AI software will show too many fingers or odd hand placement. Other oddities might be mismatched shoes or earrings, a misshapen jaw, or extra legs.
WRITING. Look closely at writing on a sticker, street sign or billboard. Watch for blurry writing when it shouldn’t be or wrongly formed letters, or the letters that don’t spell words.
GLOSSY. The overly glossy look, similar to some stock photos, can be an AI giveaway. Watch for people with plastic-looking faces.
THE SOURCE. Is the person or organization sharing the image reliable and not known for promoting AI-generated media?
THE EYES. In deepfake videos, people sometimes blink oddly or else they make strange eye movements. Researchers at Cornell University found deepfake faces don’t blink properly. Also, techniques devised for measuring galaxies, researchers have found that deepfake images don't have the same consistency in reflections in both eyes.
THE FACE. Look carefully at the area around the face for evidence that it was swapped onto another person’s body.
THE LIPS. Do the lips have abnormal movements and unrealistic positioning?
MOVEMENT. Watch for unnatural jumps or the absence of motion blur that is typically present in authentic videos. If creators manipulate AI-generated photos using Photoshop techniques such as blurring or file compression, they can fool detection tools.
PATTERNS. AI images often have abnormal patterns in the physics of lighting.
PHOTOMETRIC CLUES. Look at “photometric” clues such as blurring around the edges of objects that might suggest they’ve been added later; noticeable pixelation in some parts of an image but not others; and differences in coloration.
AI Definitions: Explainability
/Explainability (or explainable AI; it is similar to but not the same as interpretability or interpretable AI) - While interpretability relates to understanding an AI’s inner workings, explainable AI focus on observed patterns in what the AI does to draw conclusions. Applied after a model has already made its decision or prediction, explainability offers insight into which features or variables played into the outcome in an effort to ensure accuracy, fairness and user trust. Explainability focuses on individual decisions, rather than the model as a whole. Because explainability techniques are applied after the fact, they can be used with any model. On the downside, it can oversimplify a model's decision-making process and make is often difficult for non-experts to understand. Some governments are requiring that AI systems include explainability.
More AI definitions here
False Starts
/It is important to distinguish between a real new beginning in someone’s life and a simple defensive reaction to an ending. Each may exert strain on a relationship, but the new beginning must be honored. The defensive reaction is simply a new way of perpetuating the old situation and needs to be considered as such.
Unfortunately, there is no psychological test you can take at such times. It is often difficult to be sure whether some path leads forward or back, and it may be necessary to follow it for a little way to be sure. But there are two signs that are worth looking for before you start. The first is the reaction of people who know you well: not whether they approve or disapprove, but whether they see what you propose to do as something new or simply a replay of an old pattern. The second indication comes from the transition process itself: Have you really moved through endings into the neutral zone and found there the beginning you now want to follow is this “beginning” a way of avoiding an ending or aborting the neutral zone experience?
William Bridges, Transitions
13 Ways to Spot AI Writing
/Tips for determining if an article is likely written by AI.
OVERUSED WORDS. AI-written articles tend to come back to the same terms multiple times. Examples would be comprehensive, delve, meticulous, versatile and pivotal. Before 2024, overused AI words in scientific research papers were typically nouns. More recently, researchers say AI excessively uses "style" words—mostly verbs and some adjectives. The phrases AI picks up can often make the text sound more like marketing material than academic scholarship or quality news writing.
TORTURED ACRONYMS. Generative AI will sometimes pick up the wrong words for an acronym. For instance, a data science paper might use "CNN" to refer to "convolutional brain organization" instead of "convolutional neural network.”
NONSENSICAL PARAPHRASES. An academic paper written by AI might have “glucose bigotry” instead of “glucose intolerance,” where it changed a single word and did not recognize the context.
ACADEMIC CITATIONS. AI-written articles with academic citations have been known to include incorrect or incomplete references. AI writing has been also known to take quotations out of quotation marks, paraphrase them, and delete the citation.
STYLE CHANGES. A sudden change in writing style within an article or essay may indicate that the author’s work was rewritten using AI.
PERFECT GRAMMAR. A typo, particularly in student writing, could indicate the article or essay is not wholly the work of a bot. Mistake-free writing is, ironically, a red flag. However, savvy writing prompts may ask the AI to include some errors in order to mislead inspectors.
MECHANICAL STYLING. AI tends to mechanically repeat expressions that appear often in the internet material that it was trained on. The result is often uninspired and generic prose that often lacks any specific point.
ARTICLES. AI will make errors in the use of definite and indefinite articles, often because it does not recognize the context to determine whether an article is required and which one. For example, AI editors will often fail to use the definite article before common nouns such as “participants” and “results” when referring to a study. “Results show that…” is a general reference while “The results show that…” are those of the present study. Generative AI will miss this distinction.
SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT. AI often fumbles subject-verb agreement when the verb does not immediately proceed the verb.
VERB TENSE. Generative AI will confuse when to use past tense and present tense.
LINKING WORDS. AI editors tend to delete words linking sentences and paragraphs, such as “however,” “therefore,” “in contrast,” and “moreover.”
ARCHAIC LANGUAGE. Since older texts from the early twentieth have been more available to use as training data sets for LLMs than current writing samples, some researchers have found overuse of words that were popular then but have since fallen out of common usage as evidence of generative AI.
PREDICTABILITY. Text is more likely to be human than AI when it includes sarcasm, current pop-references or insults the reader. Writing that doesn't match predictable patterns is more likely to be human generated.
Can God speak through AI?
/“The presence of A.I. in faith-based spaces poses a larger question: Can God speak through A.I.? That’s a question a lot of Christians online do not like at all because it brings up some fear. It may be for good reason. But I think it’s a worthy question.” - Eli Tan writing in the New York Times
Taking Action
/It doesn’t matter if you have a genius IQ and a PhD in quantum physics, you can’t change anything or make any sort of real-world progress without taking action. There’s a huge difference between knowing how to do something and actually doing it. Knowledge and intelligence are both useless without action. It’s as simple as that.
Successful people know that a good plan executed today is better than a perfect plan executed someday. They don’t wait for the “right time” or the “right day” or the “right (impossible) circumstances”, because they know these reactions are based on a fear and nothing more. They take action here and now, today – because that’s where real progress happens.
10 AI Prompt tools and articles
/How to Become a Prompt Engineer - Simplearn
Google’s new AI tool uses image prompts instead of text - CNN
Surprising ways to prompt AI – Wonder Tools
5 prompts to have a fun AI chatbot conversation - Mashable
Create Better AI Images With These Expert Prompt Writing Tips - CNET
Google releases ‘prompting guide’ with tips for Gemini in Workspace – 9to5 Google
Users are turning to reinforcement prompts to fix ChatGPT laziness – Stack Diary
Getting the best of GenAI: How to use prompt engineering in legal work – Reuters
How to talk to an AI: Tips for getting the most out of chatbots like ChatGPT - Washington Post
WTF is prompt engineering? – Digiday
What is a prompt engineer? (And how can you become one?) – Fast Company
AI Hallucinations "can be remarkably useful"
/Innovators are finding that A.I. hallucinations can be remarkably useful. “The public thinks it’s all bad,” said Amy McGovern, a computer scientist who directs a federal A.I. institute. “But it’s actually giving scientists new ideas. It’s giving them the chance to explore ideas they might not have thought about otherwise.” A.I. hallucinations are reinvigorating the creative side of science. They speed the process by which scientists and inventors dream up new ideas and test them to see if reality concurs.
-William Broad writing in the New York Times
18 Professional Journalism Organizations
/American Society of Journalists and Authors
Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism
Asian American Journalists Association
European Federation of Journalists
Global Investigative Journalism Network
Indigenous Journalists Association
The Institute for Independent Journalists
Investigative Reporters and Editors
National Association of Black Journalists
National Association of Hispanic Journalists
NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists
Radio Television Digital News Association
The Common Mistake in Premarital Counseling
/The failure of premarital counseling to affect the divorce rate today may be due primarily to the fact that the approach is often directed toward the couple's relationship. The focus on personality, psychodynamics, and transactions has deprived couples of a more enriching perspective from which to evaluate their problems and their future. By switching the focus to the bride and groom's families of origin, not only can premarital counseling be made more effective in its own right, but the very experience also becomes an opportunity to affect more than one couple and far more than one generation.
Edwin Friedman, Generation to Generation
AI Definitions: Unsupervised training
/Unsupervised training - Just as children mostly learn to explore their world on their own, without the need for too much instruction, in this type of AI training, the AI is turned loose on raw data without a human first labeling the data. Instead of the AI being told what to look for, it learns to recognize and cluster data possessing similar features. This can reveal hidden groups, links, and patterns within the data and is really helpful when the user cannot describe the thing they are looking for—such as a new type of cyberattack. Not as expensive as supervised learning, it can work in real-time but is also less accurate.
More AI definitions here
One Mile, 20 Times
/Asked by a weekend jogger how on earth he had the energy and stamina to run twenty miles, the long-distance runner smiled and said, “Good heavens. I couldn’t possibly get going if I thought about running twenty miles. I run one mile—but I do it twenty times.”
Herbert and Jill Meyer, How to Write
16 Webinars This Week about AI, Journalism & Media
/Tue, Jan 14 - AI Innovator Collaborative
What: A regular gathering for ONA members already using AI in journalism to connect and share ideas.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free to ONA members ($75 annually, $25 students)
Sponsor: Online News Association
Tue, Jan 14 - Writing and Pitching Reported Personal Essays
What: The popular personal essay is still in demand, but many editors now seek the hybrid reported personal essay, which combines research, interviews, expert quotes, journalism skills, and creative nonfiction storytelling. In this webinar, we will differentiate types of personal essays with an emphasis on the format, process, and tools needed for the reported personal essay genre. We’ll also share advice on markets such as style, travel, life, parenting, health and opinion sections and provide tips on how to pitch editors.
Who: ASJA member and New School writing professor Candy Schulman; Karen Blum, an ASJA member, heads ASJA’s Virtual Education Committee.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free to members, $20 for nonmembers
Sponsor: The American Society of Journalists and Authors
Tue, Jan 14 - Fact Checking - A Global Update
What: While all good journalists already fact check their stories, independent fact-checking organizations have sprung up around the world to address the increased misinformation being promoted in social media and by many political figures.
Who: Angie Holan, Director of the International Fact Checking Network, will talk about how the IFCN is helping groups and journalists around the world. Dulamkhorloo Baatar is the founder of NEST Mongolia, the Mongolian affiliate with the IFCN. She will discuss the importance of having an independent fact checking organization, especially in a fledgling democracy, like that in Mongolia.
Retired journalist and educator Jeff South will moderate the session.
When: 7 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists
Tue, Jan 14 - Create Captivating Marketing Videos Fast using PowerPoint
What: This session will show you how to use PowerPoint to create all of this kind of content so that it’s impactful, shows off your brand in the best light, and effectively communicates. Plus, see how you can not only create it quickly in PowerPoint, but then repurpose the content easily into multiple other formats. You’ll be amazed at what’s possible, and so will your clients. Understand the process for creating visuals for your content that communicate effectively Become a wizard with PowerPoint to create and repurpose content quickly and easily Transform your visual content for use across multiple channels
Who: Richard Goring Director, BrightCarbon
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Training Magazine Network
Wed, Jan 15 - Build Smarter Campaigns with AI-Powered Communication Strategies
What: This interactive workshop teaches participants how to use AI tools like ChatGPT or Jasper to craft personalized donor communication campaigns. Attendees will engage in a hands-on exercise, drafting email templates and social media posts using AI tools with live feedback from experts. They will also learn about how TechSoup’s AI Services can enhance donor engagement and overall impact for nonprofits.
Who: Lisa Quigley Tapp Network; Kayla Walsh Tapp Network.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: TechSoup
Wed, Jan 15 - A digital safety primer for journalists
What: Best practices and resources on digital safety for journalists. Attendees will learn how to gauge their own risks, assess their habits and leave with a list of resources they can deploy to improve their digital safety.
Who: Jyoti Madhusoodanan Civic Science Fellow, AHCJ; Alison Joyce Senior analyst, New York Times Information Security Team; Tat Bellamy-Walker Program manager of digital safety training and resources (media), PEN America.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Association of Health Care Journalists and the National Association of Science Writers
Wed, Jan 15 - Report for America Information Session
What: Report for America is a national service program that places early-career and experienced journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered topics and communities across the United States and its territories. The application is now open for 80+ corps member reporter positions in RFA host newsrooms. If you have any questions or are just curious about RFA, this info session is for you!
Who: - Earl Johnson is Report for America's Vice President of Recruitment and Alumni Engagement. Tim Lampley is Report for America's recruitment manager.
When: 1:30 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Report for America
Wed, Jan 15 - Reporting Responsibly on Immigration Policies and Issues in Times of Crisis
What: A conversation with journalists, elected officials, and community activists about responsible reporting on immigration policies and issues.
Who: Liz Rebecca Alarcon, founder and CEO of Pulso
When: 6 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Latinas Represent, The Pivot Fund
Thu, Jan 16 - Covering tariffs: What journalists need to know
What: Panelists will discuss how steel tariffs in the early 2000s affected exports, production and employment; What broad-based tariffs could mean for U.S. consumers in 2025 and beyond.[A brief history of tariffs in the U.S. Ideas for humanizing stories about international tariffs and interpreting research for a general audience.
Who: Lydia Cox, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Doug Irwin, the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College; Alex Goldmark, executive producer of National Public Radio’s Planet Money.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Harvard’s Shorenstein Center
Thu, Jan 16 - 2025’s Top Media and Advertising Data Trends
What: Dive deep into predictions for trends, changes, and new challenges in the wide world of data. You’ll find out: How convergence is shaping the entire ecosystem, data privacy, and how to plan for the future. Predictions for the tactical future of GenAI applications across media and advertising.
Who: David Fisher, industry principal media & entertainment, UK & EMEA, Snowflake; David Wells, industry principal Adtech & Martech, Snowflake: Erin Foxworthy, industry principal, agencies & advertisers, Snowflake.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Snowflake, Adweek
Thu, Jan 16 - Trump's vowed to deport millions. Are you ready to cover the story?
What: This isn’t just a border story – it could have a significant impact throughout the South, including where you live. It’s time to prepare to cover this critical story. Don’t know anything about immigration? Never covered deportations? We’ll help you get started. We will offer local reporters practical tips on how to cover immigration, immigration enforcement, detentions and deportations far away from the U.S.-Mexico border. This webinar is geared toward journalists in Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi but is open to journalists across the U.S.
Who: Award-winning Memphis-based reporter Daniel Connolly has reported on immigration issues for news outlets, including The Associated Press, The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal and national legal news service Law360. He wrote a book on Mexican immigration to the South, “The Book of Isaias,” published in 2016.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists
Thu, Jan 16 - How Influencers Are Changing Our Information Ecosystem
What: An overview of the landscape for influencers in today’s media environment, followed by a conversation about how we can understand the role of influencers and consume their content wisely.
Who: Robert Downen, Democracy Reporter, The Texas Tribune; Malynda Hale, actress and activist; Kurt Sampsel, Senior Program Manager, PEN America; Bridget Todd, creator and host, iHeartRadio’s There Are No Girls on the Internet podcast; host, Mozilla Foundation’s IRL podcast.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Pen America
Thu, Jan 16 - Simplified Video Workflows for Newsrooms
What: This session is designed to equip your newsroom with a simplified process for integrating vertical video into your reporting. Come for a hands-on experience that covers the entire short-form video creation process from pre-production to post-production, while streamlining workflows for you and your team to consistently produce verticals. Also: Leveraging local reporting opportunities, the ins and outs of filming yourself, and a few tricks to boost social engagement while building your presence on social platforms.
Who: Oriel Danielson, video editor at LinkedIn News.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Knight Foundation’s Newsroom Collective
Thu, Jan 16 - IJNR’s Tools for Environmental Justice Reporting
What: The reporting grants and fellowships offered by the IJNR. These resources are designed to empower journalists to tell impactful stories on environmental justice and natural resource issues.
Who: Dave Spratt, Chief Executive Officer; Adam Hinterthuer, Director of Programs; Francisco Ramirez Pinedo, Program Associate; Melissa Mylchreest, Director of Communication
When: 5:30 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources
Thu, Jan 16 - The Rise of Citizen Journalism: What does it mean under the Trump 2.0?
What: A panel discussion for creators, journalists, podcasters, photographers, and videographers.
When: 8 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: FrameShift Foundation
Fri, Jan 17 - Negotiate Like a Rockstar with FSP and IIJ
What: A collaborative discussion of rate negotiation, a vital skill freelancers should leverage both individually and collectively. A panel of experienced freelance journalists from across the industry will discuss strategies for gauging fair rates, setting a ground floor, and pushing for higher pay, better contract terms, and other points of negotiation. Then, attendees and speakers will share success stories, tips, and tricks in facilitated small groups to build our collective wisdom.
Who: Lily Meyer - Moderator, writer and organizer with the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Project; Joseph Lee - Freelance journalist and author; Mónica Ortiz Uribe - Freelance journalist; Erin McGregor - Program Manager, Association of Independents in Radio Katherine; Reynolds Lewis - founder of the Institute for Independent Journalists.
When: 12 noon, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Institute for Independent Journalists and the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Project
The Chance of Joy
/If you evade suffering, you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. –Ursula Le Guin
AI Definitions: GPT
/GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) – G for Generative because it generates words. P for Pre-trained because it’s trained on a lot of text. This step is called pre-training because many language models (like the one behind ChatGPT) go through important additional stages of training known as fine-tuning to make them less toxic and easier to interact with. T for Transformer which is a relatively recent breakthrough in how neural networks are wired. They were introduced in a 2017 paper by Google researchers, and are used in many of the latest AI advancements, from text generation to image creation. So GPT refers to a LLM (large language model) type of AI that first goes through an unsupervised period (no data labeling by humans followed by a supervised "fine-tuning" phase (some labeling).
More AI definitions here
Humor Enters
/Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle. -GK Chesterton
The Top 8 AI Video Tools
/Adobe Firefly
An all-in-one solution for video production, Adobe’s AI-driven multimedia production tool is easy to use. It can do AI video editing, 3D modeling, text-to-image and text-to-video generation, photo editing, AI-enhanced scene transitions, auto-resizing and color correction. Of course, it has a smooth integration with Adobe Creative Cloud. Because it was trained on Adobe Stock images, there are no copyright issues. All the generated images safe for commercial use. The downside: it doesn’t do well with complex queries. Free version provides 25 monthly generative credits or $4.99 a month.
Captions AI
An AI phone app for video editing that adds captions including a feature to automatically transform your voice into any of 27 languages. Easy to use. Includes a teleprompter, an AI script-writing assistant, and a suite of AI editing features.
Descript
Edit a video or audio file as you would a Google Doc. You can delete words to edit out sections of your video or audio. Add transitions, titles, and music. Can remove background noise and filler words. Cannot edit a video using natural language.
Eddie AI
Users can edit interview videos with natural language . Explain what you want in your own words. Cannot be used to add transitions, titles, or special effects. Free (but not for long). Basic explanation of how it works here.
Hypernatural
Make short videos of text, audio, a link, etc. with AI. No editing skills needed. The results are less generic than other AI-video makers, partly because the user makes stylistic choices along the way, narration, color palette, transitions, video orientation, or use your own photos. Make 10 free 30 second videos (no longer) and after than paid accounts start at $12 a month.
Ideogram
An excellent AI image and video generator. A paid account isn’t needed to get quality images, this one is easier to use for beginners than tools like Midjourney. It has a simple to use interface. Text in the images comes out more readable than most AI image creators, which is important for social media graphics, thumbnails, logos, etc. Ten credits a day free (about 5 images). Free users can only download a 70% quality JPEG image, not the full-resolution version. Images are public when using the free version. Paid accounts starts at $7 monthly for more images and quicker rendering than the free version along with advanced features like Canvas, which lets you modify images. Paid accounts can use negative prompts (what you don’t want in the image).
Invideo.io
Video editing tool that works in a Chrome browser, Plenty of templates and tools. Can take a while to upload media to it. Users can edit particular scenes. The free plan allows 10 minutes of video and 4 exports a week. Some user reviews have been negative about hidden fees and other issues with paid accounts.
Sora
OpenAI's AI high-quality video generator with watermarks. Similar to other video editing tools with frame views on the bottom and various editing tools. Available to ChatGPT Plus users (50 videos a month) and ChatGPT Pro users (10 times more usage).
Other text to video creators
Hotshot.co – 5 free generations per day.
LumaDreamMachine – 30 free generations per month.
Kling AI – 6 free generations per day.
Runway – 125 free one-time credits. Paid accounts starting at $12 per month
Ideogram.ai – 40 generations per day free, paid plans start at $8
Hailuoai.video
PixVerse – free
Pika.art - 250 initial free credits and then 30 daily credits. Paid accounts from $8 to $58 per month
Kaiber – limited and typically used to create animations and transform existing videos into different styles. 60 free credits as part of a trial.
Spending our Lives
/How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. -Annie Dillard