For the better part of five months, I've been paying for the ChatGPT subscription from OpenAI. Many people tell me I should use the free apps like Copilot. So why am I paying for an app that you can use for free through other apps? The truth is, I have been paying for ChatGPT because it really does help, and in this blog post, I will also be talking about how it helps. So without further ado, let's jump into it.
As you may or may not know, I am blind. I prefer the term visually impaired because I don't consider myself blind, but my vision could be better. It's not something that can be corrected with glasses, as my eyes are heavily scarred due to a condition called Peters Anomaly, which means scarring of the cornea.
For the past five months, I've been using ChatGPT because whenever I am out and about on an adventure or maybe at the store, sometimes there is a product I just can't figure out. Is it a carton of milk? Is it a container of juice? What is it? So I often take a photo and ChatGPT does its best to describe to me what is in the photo. It doesn't just tell me what the product is; it also tells me the ingredients on the product and what is around it.
A few weeks ago, I went to purchase a lovely canister of coffee, which costs about $21 and lasts me for about three weeks. I couldn't find the container of coffee for the life of me. I knew I was in the right aisle, but for some reason, the container was moved. Everything got jumbled and mixed up. So, I pointed my camera on my phone, took a photo of the area, and asked ChatGPT where my particular brand of coffee was. ChatGPT told me it was located on the bottom shelf, slightly to the right of where the photo was taken. Using my hands, I found the shelf, went down to the bottom shelf, and took another photo where my hand was. I asked ChatGPT again, and it said it was two containers down from my left hand on the left side of the photo. I grabbed that particular canister of coffee, took a photo of it, and ChatGPT confirmed that I had found it. I have never felt more independent in quite some time.
I love asking people for help, but it still hurts because it makes me feel less independent. ChatGPT has given back to me my independence, and I'm only paying $30 a month for my subscription from OpenAI. It's $20 a month American, but with the Canadian conversion, it comes to around $31 a month. I owe a lot of it to you, the viewer. For the past few months, I've been using the Buy Me a Coffee program on this channel. I leave a link in the description of every video, and if you're in North America, you can click that link and buy some coffee. That money gets deposited into my YouTube business account, which I use to buy coffee and fund my ChatGPT subscription.
Our biggest contributor, Nate, has been donating $25 a month. One month I use it for coffee, the next month I use it for ChatGPT. I would love to get the cool smart AI glasses from Envision, but at this time, they cost just over $1,000 American, which means about $1,100 Canadian, and I don't have that kind of money. But I wanted to talk about why I pay for ChatGPT and how it helps my life go far.
Another thing I enjoy about ChatGPT is that you can ask it questions you didn't know. For example, I was on Facebook the other day and a comedian friend of mine, Joel, posted something like, "Well, this is gonna be interesting. Cheering for the Edmonton Oilers now feels pretty awkward." I didn't understand the reference, so I took a screenshot of his post and asked ChatGPT. It explained that Joel was most likely referencing the fact that the new manager of the Oilers was involved in some sort of scandal. This way, I was able to understand Joel's post without having to do a lot of research.
ChatGPT also helps me with editing my YouTube channel. I use an app called Just Press Record to record my audio and create a transcription. Then, I take the transcription, upload it as subtitles, and import the audio into Voice Recorder Pro to remove background noise. As you may know, I have five children, and whenever I record videos, they tend to be extra loud. To make it less distracting, I try to remove as much noise as possible so viewers can focus on me.
In conclusion, ChatGPT has been an invaluable tool in my life, helping me gain back my independence. If you are visually impaired, what apps do you use to make your life easier? Thank you for watching, commenting, and subscribing. This is J.R. Bjornson, and I will catch you in the next one.
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