Part of the allure around using artificial intelligence is the near-irresistible prospect of getting whatever you’re trying to do right in record time. For instance: Are you so unprepared for Mother’s Day that you just now Googled “Mother’s Day 2024” and found this article? Consider letting AI take the pressure off you to personalize an impossible-to-forget day for the mom who matters most to you.
The woman I call mom happens to be all the way across the country from me in a small town called Battle Creek, Michigan — also known as the birthplace of Corn Flakes. It’s a lovely little spot that’s home to the original Kellogg’s factory and, according to local lore, the air sometimes smells of powdered sugar after a heavy rain.
That’s about all this California native knows about Battle Creek, and I know even less about what would make for a special Mother’s Day in the area.
Enter AI, wielding comprehensive knowledge of both everything to do in this tiny town in Michigan and (hopefully) informed knowledge of what a British woman recovering from shoulder surgery who loves country markets and interior design and architecture would like to do.
Since I’m not familiar with the area, and since the family local to my mother-in-law suggested taking her to a restaurant that serves nothing but soup (yes, they were going to take her to a literal soup kitchen for Mother’s Day), I was hoping Google’s Gemini tool (formerly Bard) would do the trick.
Gemini has had its hiccups (here’s CNET’s hands-on review of Gemini, as well as other generative AI tools Claude, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot), but was recently updated to integrate other Google products like Google Maps local information associated with its pins and places. It may also be integrated into iPhones soon.
I figured it might work wonders for someone planning a celebration from afar.
Trying Gemini to plan local fun: the prompt
If you have an account associated with Google, working with Gemini is as simple as opening the tool in Chrome and inputting your needs in the prompt field.
You want to be as specific as possible, but since I didn’t have a whole lot of information about what’s on offer in Battle Creek, I kept it focused on close-by events and locations and gave it a broad idea of who my mother-in-law is and what she’s into.
The chatbot really homed in on her being a British ex-pat and assumed she’d be pining for the pleasures of her homeland, immediately suggesting a breakfast in bed with kippers and baked beans. Just what every mother wants to tuck into first thing in the morning: aged, spatchcocked fish and canned beans in tomato sauce.