AI seeps into hair salons and hire cars beep like robot DJs – but there’s still room for a human touch
1.
My hairdresser tells me that he’s facing a growing problem: AI haircut ambitions. Gone are the days when clients would arrive with a page torn from a magazine featuring, say, Tom Cruise and the hopeful instruction: “Could you try to make me look like that please?” Now they pitch up with AI-generated images of themselves with Mr Cruise’s locks sprouting all too convincingly from their heads and a genuine belief that this must be achievable. And we’re not talking teenagers. Men in their sixties are rocking up with pictures on their phones of them sporting locks that Marie Antoinette’s wigmaker would have been challenged to concoct. My hairdresser has taken to asking them whether they perhaps failed to inform Claude that they are a tad follicly challenged out back? Indeed, just a few fallen tufts away from a Turkish hair-transplant sojourn. After a good talking to, they usually settle for “the usual”. Me? I’m thinking that something a little Marge Simpson might be good for the winter.
2.
I came up with the idea for a new radio feature the other day based around Claude and to be called simply, “Let’s ask Claude!” But instead of using the AI assistant for help, we would draw up a panel of celebrated academics, philosophers, chefs and ski instructors – all of whom are real Claudes. Listeners would send in their questions and, depending on the topic, we would then phone one of our Claude geniuses live on air. As Claude is a name sported by men and women, this would offer up a huge list of potential guests. How best to hit a puck? Let’s call Canadian ice-hockey player Claude Giroux! How do I take better pictures on my camera? Let’s call French photographer Claude Nori! How do I kill a man (on screen, my dear)? Let’s call Jean-Claude Van Damme!
3.
I just landed in Palma last night and picked up a hire car for the weekend. I seem to get a different vehicle every time and rarely what I booked. You reserve a dinky number suitable for manoeuvring through narrow roads and, after being unwillingly “upgraded”, get handed the keys to a bus. But this car marque promiscuity generates some anxiety as, every time you clamber into the driving seat, you have to work out how to drive and control the contraption. It’s always embarrassing when you need to find someone to show you how to start the engine – a tap on a screen it seems. But what’s most enervating is the beeping festival that comes with these new cars. Beep! The speed limit just changed! Beep! You are changing lanes! Beep! Your hair needs fixing! And now here’s the car that shouts at you if the camera in the steering wheel thinks that you’re not always staring straight ahead. A modern hire car matched with my driving can generate more beeps per minute than a Calvin Harris track. I’m an unintentional mobile disco.
4.
Are the old of today becoming more badly behaved? There was a delicious moment checking in to a British Airways flight the other day. A couple of years ago the airline created a new category of traveller, “group 0” which, when a flight is boarding, gives priority to its highest-spending passengers. But it’s still causing some issues because, when they start calling a flight, the slow-to-catch-on group 1 folk still push to the head of the queue, only to be forced to step aside. Anyway, as my flight was called, a young gay couple in their twenties walked to the front of the queue, only to be tapped on the shoulder by a bejewelled woman travelling with her gruff husband. “Excuse me young man,” she snootily barked, “we are group zero. Please step back. You need to wait.” Then this kid – with hair Timothée Chalamet would have pined for – turned and very politely replied, “so are we”. And in that second her world, her prejudices, were all shaken up. No wonder she demanded a gin and tonic as soon as the wheels were up.
