Restoring your memories of a vague childhood toy, movie, video game or book that's been on the tip of your tongue for years could be as simple as plugging a couple of sentences into a chatbot, some users say.
"I just used ChatGPT to find a long-time show I used to watch as a kid," one commenter enthused on the r/ChatGPT subreddit.
"And suffice to say, nothing I typed up on Google yielded any close results. But GPT got it on the first attempt from the little memory fragments I could piece up."
Another redditor similarly raved about the OpenAI chatbot's abilities as they searched for a fragment of their childhood they only faintly remembered.
CHATGPT CHIEF WARNS OF SOME ‘SUPERHUMAN’ SKILLS AI COULD DEVELOP
The user wrote, "i just tried this with a very obscure set of toys/games i vaguely remembered from the early 2000s. Only a quick 3 sentence prompt. It knew exactly what i was talking about, part of my childhood restored!"
People are using the technology of the future to find some pieces of the past that, with time, have become little more than vague recollections.
In a recent Business Insider article, writer Andrew Lloyd shared a similar experience.
"For over 20 years, I've been Googling variations of the phrase ‘giant babies, tiny adults’ in search of a TV series I loved in the 90s. I've never been able to track it down," he wrote in the article published last week, detailing that the search haunted him for decades until a Facebook commenter weighed in on a story he covered about 21-year-old TikToker Grace Miller, who was relieved after the internet helped her find an obscure animated movie from the early 2000s.
HOW STRESSED-OUT PARENTS ARE NOW NAVIGATING PARENTHOOD WITH CHATGPT
He was then inspired to try ChatGPT in the quest to find his own lost childhood show and, with a little elbow grease and a few attempts, the chatbot gave him what he sought.
"It seems like you might be describing the TV show 'Josh Kirby... Time Warrior!' The show is an American-Canadian production that aired in the late 1990s, and it follows the adventures of a young boy named Josh Kirby, who travels through different time periods and dimensions," the bot told him, according to the article.
Lloyd, like others, used the opportunity to revisit the past and watch the show he thought he'd forever lost to time.
The best part? Anyone can try it, and it's as simple as entering a few descriptive factors.
AI EXPERTS WEIGH DANGERS, BENEFITS OF CHATGPT ON HUMANS, JOBS AND INFORMATION: ‘DYSTOPIAN WORLD’
One redditor used the bot to rediscover an "obscure fighting game" they'd searched for years to find, discovering it was "Sega Mega Drive - Eternal Champions."
Another post on the ChatGPT subreddit said the chatbot helped them locate a PlayStation 2 game from their childhood called "Shepherd's Crossing." Those in the comments said the platform helped them find other classic games made for the console.
"There was a game [that's] been bothering me for years. Thanks to this post I was able to find it," one wrote.
So, the next time you're wondering about that Super Nintendo game you vaguely remember, that animated movie from the ‘90s you’re struggling to identify, or that set of toys you used to play with as a toddler that you would like to find again, give AI a try.
