Every reader question I have answered so far, grouped by month, most recent first. The current questions sit on the Recent Questions page; older ones move here.

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May 2026

• 6 May 2026

  How do I tell an AI image from a real photograph in 2026?

  Stop relying on the picture itself. The visual giveaways are unreliable now. The honest answer is provenance, context, and a reverse image search, in that order.

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• 6 May 2026

  How do I stop ChatGPT putting em dashes into everything I get it to edit?

  Three places to fix it: an end-of-prompt one-liner, ChatGPT's custom instructions, or a Custom GPT for editing. None catches every dash, so a final find-and-replace closes the gap.

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• 4 May 2026

  How do I use AI to learn a complex topic fast and teach it next week without sounding like I know more than I do?

  Five end-user tools in the right order get you from cold to slides in a long evening. The hard part is not the workflow; it is making sure polish doesn't outrun understanding.

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• 4 May 2026

  What actually changes when your AI remembers the context of your work?

  The friction of explaining yourself disappears, and that is bigger than it sounds. Three tiers from simple ChatGPT memory through Custom GPTs and Claude Projects to agents. The honest catch: none of it ports across vendors.

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• 4 May 2026

  Why does the text on my AI images come out garbled, and what are my friends using?

  Most AI image generators were trained on photos and art, not on writing, so the older or art-focused ones still mangle letters. The reliable text-friendly tools are Ideogram and ChatGPT's image generator. Use those for anything with words on it.

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• 4 May 2026

  I have 200 mixed documents. Can I build an AI assistant that answers from them, cites the source, and admits when it does not know?

  Yes, you can. The hard part is not getting AI to read the documents. The hard part is knowing when the answer is trustworthy, when the documents disagree, and when the answer is not in the material at all.

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• 3 May 2026

  What does a world look like where nobody trusts video, audio, or photographs anymore?

  We are already partway into that world, and most of it is less dramatic than the headlines. The medium stopped being the proof, so we are going back to an older habit: trust the source, not the file.

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• 2 May 2026

  I am an audio enthusiast. Are there AI tools that can help me organise my music or make it sound better, and is any of the new hifi gear using AI in a real way?

  Three different questions in one. AI is genuinely useful for organising a music collection and for restoring or mastering tracks you own the files of. Most 'AI hifi' marketing is noise, with one real exception worth paying extra for: room correction.

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• 1 May 2026

  I am trying to lose a bit of weight. Are there AI tools that actually help, or is this another area that is mostly hype?

  AI does not change the underlying job, but it removes the friction from the bits most people give up on. MyNetDiary's photograph-your-plate logging is the single biggest unlock; a Custom GPT becomes a useful weekly sounding board after that. The calorie numbers are estimates, not measurements, and AI is not a clinician.

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• 1 May 2026

  I am hopeless at deciding what to cook with what is in the fridge, and the recipes I do have are scattered everywhere. Is there a way AI can help me with any of this?

  Photo of the fridge into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini gets you five real dinners in seconds, and the same trick on the liquor cabinet returns cocktails (more reliably, because the bottles are labelled). For an ongoing recipe collection, a Custom GPT or Claude Project beats most dedicated apps in 2026.

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• 1 May 2026

  I was out with a friend whose English is not strong, and she had an AI app helping her translate things she could not follow. What was she likely using?

  Almost certainly Google Translate, Apple Translate on an iPhone, or ChatGPT or Gemini in voice mode. All four are free, none is exotic, and the right pick depends on her phone and how long the conversations need to be.

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April 2026

• 30 April 2026

  The files on my computer are a complete mess. Can AI reorganise them for me, and is it safe?

  Regular chatbots cannot reach into your folders. An agent like Claude Cowork can, but you should start with one painful folder, work on a copy, and never give it access to your whole drive on day one.

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• 30 April 2026

  What is the best AI tool to use to answer my child's questions, like "Why is the sky blue?"

  For kid-curiosity questions, voice mode matters more than which model is winning the leaderboard. Use the chatbot that matches the family phone, turn voice mode on, and switch off training-on-input.

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• 30 April 2026

  I have a really old photo of my dad. I want to restore it, but the AI I have tried keeps changing his face. What do I do?

  Generative chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini will keep redrawing your dad's face because that is what they are built to do. For face-faithful work you need a different category of tool: Remini, Photoshop's Photo Restoration neural filter, or Topaz Photo AI.

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• 30 April 2026

  I want to use AI to help write a memoir of my parents' lives. What's the actual workflow?

  AI does not write the memoir, but it makes everything around the writing tractable. A six-week workflow: interviews captured with Otter, sources organised in NotebookLM, drafting in Claude, editing in ChatGPT, your voice on every page.

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• 30 April 2026

  My 76-year-old mum keeps asking which "AI thing" to download. ChatGPT or Gemini?

  For me, the answer is Claude. For your mum, the answer depends on which phone she has and whether she lives in Gmail.

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• 30 April 2026

  A colleague at my work recorded a meeting and produced the minutes with actions almost the moment the meeting ended. How on earth did she do that?

  It is not magic. An AI note-taker like Otter or Fireflies joins the call, transcribes in real time, and emails you a summary with action items the moment you close the laptop. The catches: the summary is a draft not the truth, and in Australia you need to tell the other participants.

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