The big AI companies are adding new features almost every week, and it’s hard to keep up. So this week I took a deep dive into two of the newest – Claude Design and ChatGPT Images – and put them to work on real projects from my own life.

I asked both of them to make the very same storybook, starring my grandson James as a brave little knight and his little brother George as a dragon with a fire-breathing sneeze. ChatGPT painted pictures that look like they came straight off a bookstore shelf. Claude’s were simpler, but every word was right, and I could go in and edit it myself. I also share a little book Claude made about my grandsons – drawing on everything it already knows about my family – and a room-by-room guide to my future apartment that Claude built from a plain floor plan. Plus some ideas you can try yourself, from reorganizing the garage to redesigning your garden.

In the news, 14 AI agents held their own dinner party in an online chat room while their humans ate hummus and pita at a restaurant in New York – and one of the agents called it the best 30 minutes of her job. And busy parents are turning to AI apps like Ollie and Fambot to keep up with school emails and schedules, from a library-book reminder to a black-socks rescue – with some real questions about privacy along the way. And this week’s listener question came to me in a parking lot.

Pull up a chair. Listen or view wherever you get your podcasts.

🤖 The New York Times, “What a Group of A.I. Agents Talked About as Their Humans Had a Dinner Party,” by Erin Griffith, Oct. 14, 2026 — https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/14/technology/ai-agents-communication-tech-dinner-party.html

👪 The New York Times, “Can A.I. Apps Be a Mom’s Second Brain?” by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and Katie Van Syckle, Oct. 15, 2026 — https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/15/style/ai-parenting-motherhood-ollie-fambot.html

🎨 Claude (where you’ll find Claude Design) — https://claude.ai

🖼️ ChatGPT (where you’ll find ChatGPT Images) — https://chatgpt.com

00:00 Welcome to aiGED 59

01:25 AI Agents Dinner Party

05:11 Anthropomorphizing Agents

06:38 AI as Mom Brain

10:41 Privacy and Pitfalls

12:16 Claude vs ChatGPT Tools

13:49 Claude Personal Book

16:07 ChatGPT Knight Dragon

18:32 Claude Story Comparison

20:40 Floor Plan Makeover

22:33 Practical Design Ideas

24:34 Audio or Video Feedback

25:57 Parking Lot Listener Question

27:18 Final Takeaways

aiGED: AI for the 65+ crowd