Welcome back to The Flop—your cozy corner for demystifying AI with warmth, wit, and a dash of whimsy!

🐰 Down the Rabbit Hole

Who’s Behind The Bots?

Last week, we talked about LLMs (large language models) and how you interface with them - through chatbots.

This week, let’s talk about who owns these chatbots and where they sit in the pecking order. Here’s your cheat sheet:

🤖 ChatGPT is the most popular AI assistant out there—so much so that “ChatGPT” is quickly becoming shorthand for any chatbot, kind of like how we all started saying “Google it” instead of “search the internet.”

📱 Meta AI is integrated across Meta’s platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger), which drives its massive user base. It’s already reaching nearly 1 in 5 of Meta’s daily active folks.

💌 Gemini is Google’s AI assistant (formerly called Bard) and it’s tucked into tools like Gmail, Docs, and Search.

💼 Copilot is Microsoft’s suit-and-tie version of ChatGPT. Picture your favorite parrot, now proficient in Excel and PowerPoint. It’s built into Microsoft Office and Windows.

🧘 Claude comes from a company called Anthropic, which leans into a “safer AI” philosophy. It’s the quiet, thoughtful type—some users even call it the “therapist chatbot” thanks to its gentle, reflective tone.

🔍 Perplexity is more like an AI-powered search engine than a chat buddy. It gives quick, accurate summaries and actually tells you where it got the info by linking to its sources.

🐦 Grok is Elon Musk’s entry into the chatbot world, built into Twitter—er, X. It’s known for its sarcasm and real-time accuracy, since it pulls from the tweet stream itself. Think of it as your slightly chaotic, news-savvy friend.

🔍 So what’s the bottom line?

Each chatbot has its own personality, features, and approach to privacy—but under the hood, they’re often powered by similar types of language models. That’s why it’s smart to use more than one, especially when you’re doing research or trying to get a well-rounded view of something.

Case in point: to put together the table above, I asked the exact same question—“What are the most popular chatbots and how many users do they have?”—to several different bots. The answers were… close-ish, but not the same. Claude gave me the lowest user numbers across the board, while ChatGPT gave me the highest. In the end, I turned to Perplexity (with its handy citations) to fact-check and get as close to accurate as possible.

🛠️AI Hack of the Week

The Time I Let AI Do My Headshots 

The Time I Let AI Do My Headshots

I had a panel coming up and realized my headshot was… let's say “vintage.” As in, nearly a decade old. I didn’t have time to book a photo shoot, so I thought—hey, let’s see if AI can bail me out.

I did have some hesitation. I didn’t love the idea of sending my face off to a server farm overseas—visions of my likeness living forever in a Chinese data center weren’t exactly comforting. So, I wanted to use a US-based service that has a clear privacy policy.

I also did some basic research to determine what else I should care about, and most of the complaints centered around services where you had to upload 20+ images to get things right.

So I went with Aragon AI, because:

• They’re based in San Francisco with a clear privacy policy: they delete your uploaded photos and AI-generated images after 30 days. They don’t uses your photos to train AI models unless you explicitly allow it.

• The photo requirements were low-stress. All they needed were six clear photos where I was facing the camera.

✅ Step-by-Step: AI Headshots, the Lazy Efficient Way

1. Sign Up for Aragon
   I created an account and paid $45 for their basic headshot package.

2. Find Six Photos Facing Forward
   I rounded up six recent photos where I was facing the camera head-on. This was easier than expected as I was able to crop out family members and take a selfie to round out the pack.

3. Pick Backgrounds & Outfits
   I selected all the attire and background options so I had a full selection to choose from.

4. Wait for the Magic
   It took about 15 minutes before the headshots were ready. Aragon generated around 100 images, which was both impressive and… a lot.

5. Sort the Gems from the Glitches
   About 8 of them actually looked like me. The rest ranged from “eh, close enough” to “who is this person?” and “why is my hair so short?”

6. Customize Your Favorites
   Once I picked my best shot, I was able to swap out the background and even change the outfit—great if you want a version with a blazer and one with a more casual top.

Here’s one of the better ones:

Yes, it’s mostly convincing… until you spot the weird angle of my wrist and that I’m missing a full finger (yikes!). AI still struggles with hands, I guess. So I cropped it out. Voila—LinkedIn-ready.

Here’s what I got when I asked Aragon to take the above photo but put me in a green dress:

No more weird hand, but see how my hair got shorter? It also changed the background even though I didn’t ask it to do that.

🧠 My Takeaway:

AI headshots are a solid solution when you're in a pinch. The quality won’t fool a professional photographer, but for a quick refresh or a placeholder image, it gets the job done. That said, I’m still planning to book a real photographer when I get the chance. Because real lighting > fake fingers.

🙂 Things That Made Me Smile

Binkies & Zoomies

This week’s joy-bringer: an episode of the My First Million podcast featuring Elan Lee, the founder of Exploding Kittens. If you have kids, chances are you’ve played Exploding Kittens or its equally chaotic cousin Throw Throw Burrito.

This isn’t a laugh-out-loud kind of episode—it’s more heartwarming and quietly inspiring. Elan shares how he left his job at Xbox to bring back real, face-to-face play. Not on screens. Not in apps. But actual, ridiculous IRL fun.

It’s a fun one to listen to with your teen—just a heads-up that there’s a little light language (think “dammit” and “hell”) and one brief mention of sex around the 65-minute mark.

🌳 Moment of Calm

AI Antidote: Where in the World?

Before we wrap, here’s a little moment of calm for your eyeballs. No AI, no productivity hack—just nature doing its thing.

Can you guess which National Park this is?
Reply with your guess—I'll reveal the answer and give a shoutout to the first correct reply in next week's issue.

🎉 Big thanks to Jennifer for jumping in with a guess last week—Canyonlands! It wasn’t the exact park (the photo was actually from Arches National Park, home of the iconic Balanced Rock), but honestly, that’s an easy mix-up. They’re right next door and share that same stunning red rock drama. Great eye, Jennifer!

👋 Until Next Week

Thanks for being here. I know your inbox is a busy place, and I hope this one made you feel just a little smarter and more prepared in this new world of AI.

Warmly,
Ricci

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Missed out on last week’s edition? You can read it here.