TikTok's AI App

I'm sure by now everyone who is anyone who uses TikTok is aware of this newer app called AI. It is supposed to take a photo of the image in front of it and make it animated. However, many are discovering that what is in front of them is not always what appears on their screen, some even include people or animals that aren't even there.

So, of course, everyone will have fun with this and claim that the app is capturing spirits that are moving around in the house or area that you are shooting. I had to laugh because I thought it was crazy that an app would do that but, okay, I'm game let's give it a try, and sure enough, after a few places change people started showing up that weren't there. One specifically reminded me of my great-grandma whose portrait hangs in the house but the photo was taken nowhere near the photo.

But what if this app could take it one step further and not only show you "spirits" but show you a glimpse of the future? It feels almost like the original Twilight Zone episode, A Most Unusual Camera, where the camera would take a picture of what it's pointed at but it would include a future event. This happened to me, the app showed me the future. My future.

Any photo that was taken outside of the house, which is in the middle of a cornfield, would show a major highway, soon that highway turned into a freeway, and then that freeway lead to a major city. Images taken in front of a full-length mirror showed me in hotel rooms with luggage. At the time I laughed it off and kept them saved in my screenshots and it wasn't long before I was packing my bags to go on a road trip to Colorado to start my summer adventure at a National Park.

For kicks I took a picture of my packed bags with the app, the reveal showed them in a room, with a kitchen, wood flooring, and white walls, a room that I had never seen before. A room that was nothing like the bedroom where the photo was taken, I shrugged it off and went to bed early because tomorrow I would be driving all day.

Throughout the night I would hear a noise, a click, a vibration, I wasn't sure, but it could also have been a dream. I shrug it off and fall back to sleep each time. Then the next day when I get up I look at my phone to see several images have been taken during the night. Images that were taken with the IA app, images that were saved on my phone and were actual images, not screenshots.

My hands begin to tremble not only because I don't know how but because I'm seeing the why. These images are of different parts of the route that I'm supposed to drive that day. Some show an easy drive, others show weather, a detour, and an accident. The last image shows the hotel room and a woman with her dog, exhausted, tired and there is a time stamp. It shows the time as three hours later than I was planning to arrive. Is this silly nonsense or am I really being warned about the future?

Yoda, from Star Wars, echoes in my head, "careful you must be when sensing the future..." Now the question comes, do you heed this warning and leave earlier, change your route, or leave when you planned and know there could be delays? Or because you thought about leaving earlier yesterday this is now telling you not to. What would you do?