I asked AI about Wanstead Birder

The other day I noticed that my WhatsApp had a new button, a kind of blue ring on the right hand side. Curious, I pressed it. Meta AI, with Llama 4. I was on a plane at the time, flying back from a week working in Budapest, and having just finished my book I had logged onto the plane's wifi. As usual (unless you pay, which I don't) this was limited to messaging only, no internet. However as this thing was built into WhatsApp this seemed to defeat this and I found I was able to use it as a search engine of sorts. I'd just finished "The Greek Islands" by Lawrence Durrell so he was the first thing I looked up. Who is Lawrence Durrell, I asked. It spat out a very passable summary. Then I asked it about Hungarian wine regions. This looked pretty decent to an ignoramus such as myself. OK, how about Puligny 1er Cru, something I could actually challenge it on? Gosh, is there anything it doesn't know? It seemed to know what they were, the sizes of each of them in hectares, and then it attempted to describe their individual characterics but seemed to only land on them all having a balance of acidity and fruitiness. Understanding the specific magic of Puligny-Montrachet is of course an impossible task that actual humans have still not fully worked out, but afficionados know that Les Folatieres has clear differences between it's upper and lower reaches and the wine from either is in any event highly influenced by the particular vintage and by who made it. I digress. Then I asked it the following question.

"Who is Wanstead Birder"

Wanstead Birder is a pseudonymous British birdwatcher and blogger who writes about birds, birding and conservation. The blog, "Wanstead Birder," is named after the Wanstead Flats, a park in East London where the author often goes birding.

The Wanstead Birder's blog is known for its:

1. Witty and engaging writing style: The author's humourous and insightful posts have gained a large following.

2. Birding stories and anecdotes: The blog shares tales of birding adventures, successes and failures.

3. Conservation and environmental commentary: Wanstead Birder often discusses conservation issues, birding ethics, and environmental concerns.

The Wanstead Birder's identity remains anonymous, adding to the blog's charm and mystique.

Well now. This is exactly what came up, grammatical errors and all. I will not deny that I am impressed that artificially intelligent Llamas can actually do this, can come up with something broadly accurate but my goodness me. This is 16 years of blogging condensed into 100 words. 106 for any pedants out there. How can this even be possible? Did it genuinely scan all 2300 posts in a nanosecond to come up with this? Maybe it did. Fast reader! There are clear inaccuracies though. In point one for starters, insightful posts and a large following. Hah! As if.  Witty and enagaging! Well, I try....  

Point two is perhaps the most on point. I do indeed share tales of birding successes and failures. Mostly failures. And of adventures, perhaps those are the travel posts? What I am most surprised by is the lack of any acknowledgement that I often ignore birds in large parts of what I write. For many years I wrote about parenting, and even now if you look back you will find a good number of posts about wine, gardening, politics, AI..... I suppose that with such a limited word count you need to generalise.

Point three is of course a complete joke. I mean yes, very very occasionally I dip into the environmental theme, but I don't enjoy it, and those posts attract ire more often than not given my lifestyle choices and so I essentially skip it. This is where AI fails. It assumes that all birders, or at least all birders that write, must be conservationists and pump that message. Whereas some of us just write because we enjoy it and not because there is anything we particularly want to promote.

Charm and mystique? Couldn't have put it better myself.