A Slow Living Day in the Cotswolds | Garden, Cook & host with me

We've lived in this house for five years now but every morning still feels like a small discovery. The light changes with the seasons, the garden surprises me with something new and there's a quiet here that you just can't explain, you just feel it. We were even married in this very garden just beyond the old Crabapple Arch and on days like this, gentle, slow, with birdsong drifting through the windows, I remember exactly why we chose this life. These days it's shared with two very cheeky sausage dogs who are never far from my side and somehow every year I fall a little more in love with gardening, with the rhythm of it, the patience and the joy of growing things from scratch. So today I thought I'd bring you along to the garden, the kitchen and wherever else the day decides to take us. Good morning from the Cotswolds! Today I'm going to take you along for a slow seasonal day, a little bit of gardening, some cooking and a little bit of table arranging as we have got some friends coming over later on this afternoon. It is a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the church bells are playing and I cannot wait to get out into the garden. So before our guests arrive today I am going to have a little tidy up of our herbaceous border. We installed this border about three and a half years ago now and we had a really precise planting plan. Lots of you guys have asked me about this planting plan, it's actually a really fantastic thing to do if you have got a big stretch of lawn or perhaps you don't have anything in your garden just yet but you want to add in lots of seasonal colour. A herbaceous border, it changes I feel every week, every day almost, it feels as though something new is coming into bloom and it's a great way of adding beautiful flowers into an otherwise plain area. So I'll leave a link to our planting plan down in the description box below and also on a QR code here if you would like to emulate a similar border. But for today it's just a bit of maintenance, a bit of tidying, I can see that our lupins, some of them have gone to seed so by snipping them, deadheading them, that will encourage growth for the new lupins to start to bloom. If you've ever dreamt of having a garden that's full of seasonal colour from spring to late autumn then a herbaceous border is a really perfect place to begin. They're usually made up of perennials which are plants that come back year after year, getting bigger and fuller time after time. So the key is planning, thinking about your space, is it sunny, is it shady, what is the soil like and from there you can begin choosing plants, which plants bloom at different times and have different textures and heights so there's always something interesting to look at. In our own border in the early spring we have the beautiful height from the alliums and then as we go into summer that changes for the grasses, the salvias get really tall and then my personal favourite are the anemones which come out in mid-summer. Those are in the middle creating the height and the structure and then around the edge we have got softer lower growing perennials such as geranium and erigeron. I would say the best thing about a herbaceous border is that it just gets better over time as you add in your personal favourites and see what plants love to grow in that space year after year it'll just get even more beautiful. So we've opted for a really full herbaceous border with lots of grasses, lots of texture and height and can you believe this was all just lawn a few years ago we completely started this from scratch the same with the border around the other side. So here on the corner you can see the erigeron which absolutely loves it here and it's a really easy flower to grow it doesn't need any particular care or maintenance it barely needs soil to be honest it can grow even in really rocky areas. Ours is looking very wild and wonderful surrounding the yew ball and I would say that little hedging balls are a fantastic way of having structure all throughout the year. The leaves around it that's actually my anemone and it's huge it started off just as one little plant and now it's really taking over so sometimes you do have to cut things back which I definitely will do for the anemone at the end of this year. I'll show you on the screen what it'll look like when it's in full bloom and then to soften the edges down here we've gone for some beautiful grasses in the digital download below I will make sure that you can see exactly which varieties we've got in case you want to have the same ones but just a few weeks ago these were all in flower and now we can see that they are starting to go to seed. We've still got a few alliums including this giganteum allium here but a few of the earlier ones like this have started to go to seed. Then we have got a little bit more height here with our verbena which looks really really beautiful and then if you take a look a little bit further in we've got one of my personal favourite perennials which is the lupine and the bees absolutely love lupines as they do with salvia which I would say is a real classic when it comes to an English cottage style garden. We've also got some euphorbia this does need to get reduced in size year after year because it can very much take over but considering that this herbaceous border is about three years old and we've not actually done any kind of restructuring we've just let it do its own thing I think it's still looking really good. Something however which has taken over and we had to hugely cut back so it doesn't look great at the moment are the beautiful geraniums. These I would say have been doubling if not tripling in size every single year. This side of the border gets a little bit more shady as it's under the yew trees so we have slightly less blooms in this and more of the grasses but as you can see the salvia and the euphorbia still absolutely love it here and it's nice for us to have something beautiful to look out on when we're in the living room or enjoying the sun on the deck chairs. Now it won't be long until the courgettes are coming through thick and fast in the garden and the farm shops are full of them so for our lunch today I thought I would prepare a courgette and creme fraiche tart. It's perfect enjoyed with a lovely loose leaf salad or just on its own with something cold in the garden. I'm going to add some herbs to my tart so first of all let's head down to the kitchen garden and see what we can just for Charlie and I. It slows me down, it reminds me to notice the light, the scent of rosemary on my hands, the sound of the birds settling in for the evening. I used to fuss over whether things matched or when they were perfect but now I just choose what feels good in the moment. A crumpled linen napkin, wildflowers from the garden, a jug that always spills the water every time I pour it. It's all part of the charm. The truth is it's really not about the table setting at all, it's the pause, the intention, that tiny moment that says this was worth making lovely. Okay the table is laid and I've just added some fresh herbs from the garden onto the tart. Our guests are going to be here any moment so I'm going to quickly run upstairs pop on a fresh outfit and it's time to host. Really these peonies are slightly past their best but I want to give them one final send-off so they are the centrepiece for my table florals. Hopefully they don't all fall apart on the tablescape but by the sounds of the dogs barking it seems like our guests have just arrived. Well it's a few hours later, our friends have gone home now, that was such a lovely day all together. The sun was shining, it was really toasty and all of the food went down such a treat. So now we're just going to enjoy our lovely evening routine with a stroll around the garden, a quick walk in the fields with the dogs and I just like to potter about with my gardening trug doing a little bit of deadheading, a little bit of tidying. I find that if I do this every evening it just helps me to stay on top of things. So and that's today. I've taken the boys for a walk, it's time to take off my makeup and head to bed. Today has been simple, imperfect, full of the things that I love the most. If you enjoyed spending the day with me in the garden, in the kitchen, at the table then I would love to have you here again. You can subscribe if you'd like to follow along and I'd love to know in the comments what's growing in your garden at the moment or what would you love to grow. I'll see you soon with a new recipe or something new blooming that I can't wait to share. Thank you so much for five years my videos have been daily vlogs of our life here in the Cotswolds and I absolutely love sharing that here on YouTube but over the last, I guess only really the past few weeks, I've realized that a lot of my vlogs have been very very similar. They have been the same daily routine and not much different stuff is going on in each of the vlogs, so I wanted to try something new. I wanted to try seeing if AI, which I have been a little bit scared of until now, and in particular ChatGPT could help me to design the perfect vlog. This weekend seemed like the perfect time to do it, it's currently lunchtime on Saturday, I haven't started filming this vlog yet and we don't really have any plans out of the ordinary. We're hosting friends here at the house tomorrow, we've got a day here in the garden today but I have been showing clips of gardening, clips of us hosting so many times here on the YouTube channel. So I thought I'd put in what I want the vlog to be in ChatGPT and let's see if it helps me do anything different or if just those little changes that it recommends can help me to maybe reach new audiences with this YouTube video or maybe just prove that what I have been doing is the right thing for the channel. So now you're going to see behind the scenes of the YouTube video that you have just watched. So I've logged on to ChatGPT and I asked it to please help me plan a vlog style YouTube video that will help my 10 year old channel to reach new audiences. It can include topics including gardening, cooking, a little bit of fashion and I live in a beautiful old house in the Cotswolds. Obviously the more information you give ChatGPT, which is using AI, which is artificial intelligence, the better the results will be. I could have put in my actual channel, I could have put in my audience demographics, but this is a starting point. Charlie and I were just having a conversation in the car that maybe AI to our generation is what the internet was to our parents' generation. My dad famously said of the internet, oh it's fun but it'll never catch on. Oh how wrong he was. Sorry dad you were so wrong. And that's kind of how I feel about AI but also a little bit nervous about it. I've used AI a couple of times before. I played around with the Beatrix Potter trend to turn my photos into Beatrix Potter sketches and I actually used it this morning to come up with an Instagram caption for my rhubarb strawberry and rose ice cream because I was in the gym and I needed a caption quickly and it wrote out all of the recipe ingredients for me. How cool is that? I'm in two minds as to whether it's a good thing or a bad thing but I think it is a thing and we've got to embrace it. We've got to see if we can use it otherwise we'll get left behind because let me tell you everyone is using it. Everyone is using AI in some way or another so maybe this is the first YouTube video you've seen that is designed by AI or maybe it's the first YouTube video that someone is actually admitting it's been designed by AI. Who knows? But here we are. It's a little bit black mirror. It's a little bit removing the third wall, is that what you would say? But I'm going to show you how AI and ChachiBT designed this entire YouTube video. Okay let's get started. So the first thing that it's telling me are the YouTube title ideas. A slow living day in the Cotswolds, garden, cook and get dressed with me. I quite like that idea but then it's also given me a few other ideas. Simple pleasures in the Cotswolds, a morning to evening blog or cottagecore life in the English countryside. These are SEO based titles. It's also giving me a video structure and flow. So the opening scene, a slow peaceful morning in the Cotswolds with birds, misty fields, a kettle boiling and a voiceover or an on-camera introduction and then it's given me some text. So that is what I need to film first but I'm gonna ask ChachiBT what should I be wearing for the introduction of this video. Let's see what it says. I'm always polite so I'm going to say thank you. This sounds great. What outfit should I wear to film this video? You're so welcome. Your outfit should reflect your Cotswolds country lifestyle. Effortless, beautiful, comfortable and practical enough for gardening, cooking and moving around. Here's a curated outfit idea that complements each section of the vlog. So maybe a flowy linen or cotton dress in an earthy soft pastel tone such as sage green, dusty rose, oatmeal or cream. Button up or wrap style if you'll be layering. Maybe an apron and then for the gardening some worn-in wellies or ankle boots and cosy socks or barefoot inside for warmth and intimacy. Straw hat for the gardening scene adds visual interest and a light utility jacket outdoors if it's chilly. Beauty should be natural and timeless. Hair in a soft braid, loose bun or down with natural waves. Makeup, keep it minimal with a touch of cream blush and accessories. Small gold hoops, a delicate necklace, nothing too modern or flashy, maybe a vintage brooch if you're wearing a cardigan. It's then telling me why this is going to work on camera and it even prompts me to see if I want it to recommend specific brands or pieces. Okay I'm going to take that information, I'm going to go and plan an outfit and let's film this vlog. Okay a flowy linen or cotton dress in a soft earthy or pastel tone. I think it's time to bring back the iconic Josie Amazon dress. Okay time for makeup and ChachiBT says beauty should be natural and timeless with a minimal makeup of cream blush, dewy skin and maybe a tinted lip balm. So I'm going to take off the lipstick that I was wearing earlier, luminous silk cream blush, dewy skin. I'm going to use the Day Glow Highlight Balm from Merit and a tinted lip balm. Okay I've got my favourite from By Terry. Okay hair and makeup done according to ChachiBT, let's start filming. I've asked ChachiBT for more ideas for the opening scene and it's actually given me five, six different scenarios. Laundry in the garden, coffee in a quiet morning which would be modern and intimate, a Cotswold charm version which would be cultural and atmospheric, a garden awakening cinematic and nature focused. I think I've done garden awakening a few times lately so I'm going to go with option three which is Cotswold charm. It says to show the exterior of your house, stone walls, ivy, old windows, church bells in the distance, winding roads and the village postbox. So that is the perfect to-do list for me to capture for the start of this vlog. and now I've just asked ChachiBT to help me a little bit more with the intro. I want ChachiBT to write the entire intro script for me and I've just given it a little bit more information saying that we've lived here for five years and that we even got married in the garden. So what you heard at the beginning of the vlog pretty much is what ChachiBT recommended, however I don't love the last line so I'm going to ask it to tweak it. Thank you, I love it, but let's change the last few sentences. Maybe let's talk about my two sausage dogs and my ever-growing love of gardening. It's also weird how ChachiBT has a personality, it's just said perfect, let's infuse the ending with your sausage dogs, adorable, and your love of gardening, but let's make it relatable. And it sent me the amended script which will be exactly what you heard at the beginning of the vlog. Hello my darlings, it's now Sunday morning and I am wearing the exact same thing as yesterday because I didn't do any more of the video yesterday. This is a little bit of a sneak peek into what I rarely but sometimes do if I feel like I didn't capture enough content on one day. I feel like this vlog is just revealing all of the secrets but sometimes if I feel that a vlog is missing something I might redress the way that I was on the original clips and go in and refilm some stuff. It's rare because it makes the editing really tricky, it does somehow kind of ruin the flow of the video a little bit if it's not completely seamless, but in this instance because I want to follow the ChachiBT layout of the video exactly and I didn't end up doing it yesterday because it was a Saturday afternoon and I actually just wanted to do other things, I need to redo or do those things now. So we have got friends coming over a bit later so I've just been doing a little bit of food prep while the heatless curls set in because I did have a slight curl in my hair yesterday so I need to try to get it exactly the same. I've done makeup identical, outfit identical, so all we filmed yesterday was actually the intro clips so now I have to actually start to film the vlog and according to ChachiBT it's the opening scene with a voiceover, ah no we've already done the voiceover but I need to do my introduction to the camera. Good morning from the Cotswolds, today I'm taking you along for a slow seasonal day with a bit of gardening, a little bit of baking and something new I've been trying with fashion. So I'm gonna record my version of that, then the next segment of the vlog is garden time, the next segment is seasonal cooking, then a little bit of fashion which I may do today, I may not, and then a wind down evening routine. So there's lots to film, you will have seen it hopefully looking like it was all filmed on one day but in reality I might actually film it over three days, we'll see. So I'm gonna take out the heatless curls and start filming that opening scene exactly as ChachiBT tells me to. This is weird isn't it, this is so weird, it feels like a lot more work than a normal vlog because I'm following almost like a script and I definitely prefer to do them a lot more naturally. I guess at the end of this video we'll have a little sit and chat about what we think worked, what we think didn't work, what I would do in the future using ChachiBT, what I definitely wouldn't do. How have I ended up with so many hair bubbles? But anyway let's get filming. Okay hair down, now I'm gonna try and make this sound as natural as possible even though I'm talking essentially from a script. Let me know if you felt that the intro felt a bit weird this time or if I managed to make it seem natural. I'm not going to say my darlings which is something that I say at the beginning of every video so that's probably going to be a little bit of a telltale sign. I like to stand in this little area here because lighting is really nice but also I like to wait until the sun comes out from behind a cloud. I can't believe I'm admitting all of this, this is just like the stuff that goes on in my head but now I'm telling you everything. I really hope this doesn't ruin the magic of future vlogs but this is just everything. So as soon as the sun comes out I'm gonna try to film this intro and try and make it seem as natural as possible. Okay how's the cloud situation? Good morning from the Cotswolds, today I'm taking you along for a slow seasonal day with a little bit of gardening, some baking... Good morning from the Cotswolds, today I'm going to take you along for a slow seasonal day, a little bit of gardening, some cooking into the garden. Okay I went a little bit off piste but I'm sure it'll be okay. So the purpose of what I just did according to ChatGPT is to hook the viewers with beauty and charm and the promise of varied but gentle content. Okay I think we did that. Up next is garden time, we've got three and a half minutes here, we're refreshing the herb patch today, talk about what's in bloom, what's edible this month, tips for beginner friendly gardening, this brings in new viewers. Okay tips for beginner friendly gardening, right, voiceover prompt, even just 20 minutes outside with my hands in the soil, it resets everything. Okay let's do it. Okay tour of a current garden project, I'm going to do the herbaceous border. So before our guests arrive today I am going to have a little tidy up of our herbaceous border, we installed this border about three and a half I just can't help but ramble keeping them short but sweet is just not my style. So it does actually say optional time lapse of digging or planting with soft music so I'm going to film a time lapse of sorting out the herbaceous border and we'll find some really lovely gentle music so that hopefully it's relaxing to watch. This tripod is my best friend because it holds my phone and my camera so it's very very versatile so I'm going to set this up and I think we'll start with some shots of me getting some bits out of the greenhouse, this is why music over time lapses is very useful. I always find it so funny when I see clips of content creators like filming themselves getting into their car and then driving away because you just know that as soon as that clip that you've just seen has ended they stopped the car, got out the car, come back and grabbed the camera but you know it happens on tv and everything too, I just I just find it funny. Okay let's find a nice camera angle that's going to show the majority of what I'm doing Okay I got a few different camera angles, I started off with one that showed the house, I think that's a nice way of setting the scene. I like to enable viewers to see where I am, I never like to do things just for vlogging so I always like to do things that are genuinely useful so I genuinely needed to deadhead my lupins so I'm glad I got that done. Now I need to change my batteries and I'm going to do the segment where it says give tips for beginners so I guess I'll talk about how to set up a herbaceous border. So as much as I could share my own knowledge about setting up a herbaceous border I bet chat gbt has got an even better way of wording it so let's go back to the chat. How should I explain to my audience how they can start their own herbaceous border? Explaining how to start a herbaceous border is a perfect way to educate and gently showcase your gardening knowledge, especially if it's paired with a visual tour of your own border or an established one. Here's a clear conversational way to explain it in your video. Oh my gosh this is amazing, it's given me a full script and it's better than anything I could have written myself, this is where it's a bit scary. I think what I'm going to have to do is read a little bit to camera and then I'm going to have to insert some overlays because I really want to read exactly what it's got written here. If you've ever dreamt of having a garden that's full of seasonal colour from spring to late autumn... Oh my gosh it is so much harder when I'm trying to say something that's scripted than if it was to just flow naturally. I couldn't be a movie actress, that was really hard. I just don't think that's going to have come across naturally at the beginning of this video, but yeah we'll see, we'll see. I think now I'm going to give a visual tour of what I've just spoken about in that clip. It feels like I'm living a double life and coming back to tell you what I've been doing. So wow, it's really gone into a lot of detail on how to make a herbaceous border. Is every bit of internet advice going to be redundant because of ChatGBT? Because it is just so detailed and clever. I'm going to go back to the video plan. So I've done the gardening bit, next is segment number three which is minute five to nine, although I'm sure I've probably gone over five minutes, which is the seasonal cooking. Use something from your garden or a local Cotswold market and talk through a comforting seasonal recipe with cosy visuals such as wooden spoons, an agar stove or vintage crockery. You could add a quick recipe text overlay or point viewers to a blog post. I do do these sorts of things already, and there's also a voiceover prompt. There's nothing quite like the smell of rhubarb and vanilla filling an old stone kitchen. Gosh, it is so romantic. Right, let's ask ChatGBT what's in season. I'm going to begin the cooking segment. I have courgettes in the fridge and puff pastry and creme fraiche. What shall I make? I'm hoping it's going to say a tart because that's what I want to do. Lovely ingredients and very Cotswold's countryside kitchen. With courgettes, puff pastry and creme fraiche, you could make a courgette and creme fraiche tart. Rustic, simple, elegant and very camera friendly. Here's how you can frame it in the vlog. I love this so much. It's scary. So ChatGBT has given me the full recipe. I guess I could have told it exactly what I've got in the fridge and it would have made it even more precise, but to be honest, glancing through this, I think it's pretty perfect. So I'm just going to get everything laid out ready and then I'm going to follow the recipe that it's telling me. And also, can I just say, I love how it's laid out. It's as easy as I would want it to be. You know, I could literally copy and paste this and put it into the video. Maybe I'll do that. Right. Puff pastry, courgettes, creme fraiche. Let's do it. One clove of garlic and zest of half a lemon. So decorating a set is not something that I usually do, but seeing as it wants cosy visuals, I thought I would actually get my string of garlic out. And for visual effect, I've got some lime as well as lemon. Let's hide the dog food. That's not quite so pretty. Remove the laundry from the agar. Handful of grated parmesan, fresh thyme or basil. Okay, I think the most wholesome thing to do would be to show picking the thyme and the other herbs from the garden. So I think I'll film the intro in the kitchen and then go and do those little bits. Perfect timing. The sun has just come out. Now, how do I introduce it? Courgettes coming in thick and fast, lingering in the fridge. Tart is one of my favorite ways to use them. Perfect with a green salad. Now it won't be long until the courgettes are coming through thick and fast in the garden and the farm shops are full of them. Okay, so far, so good. I'm a little bit more natural when I freestyle a little bit. This is the ultimate cozy visual. So I'm going to take this down to the kitchen garden to get the herbs. Okay, herbs are quiet. Now I need to... Oh, vlog filming tips. Top down shot of arranging the courgettes. Very visual. Add a cut of you taking it out of the oven. Oh, would you like a captioned recipe card for your video or a little backstory to tie into a seasonal memory? This adds lovely storytelling depth and I can just give that a thumbs up. Recipe card, please. Okay, now I need to actually make it and we've got an hour until our guests arrive. So timing is okay. I would rather have a little bit more time. So I think I'm going to have to do this on a time lapse because otherwise it would just take too long. Let's make this look as aesthetic as possible. Now, if I'm doing anything that goes in a bowl, I prefer to do it over on the wooden area, just because I think it's more aesthetic than our grey granite. So again, I'm going to create a cosy kind of set there. Chachi Petit recommended wooden spoons. I love the hanging garlic. So let's make that area look pretty. Got the onions, got my most cosy vibe bowls. I don't love the plastic of the creme fraiche, but needs must. Okay, the tart is done. It's looking pretty good. I will use the Chachi Petit instructions and I'll have popped them on the screen during the first edit. Now, while I'm waiting for the oven to come to temperature, I've got a lot of tidying up to do. Okay, the kitchen is tidy. I've set the oven to 200 degrees because it's just a lot more even temperature wise and reliable. However, for the sake of the video, I'm going to film putting it into and taking it out of the AGA because I think that's just going to look a lot more cosy vibes and Chachi Petit did mention an AGA. Oh, no one's gonna know. No one's gonna know. Okay, another query for Chachi Petit because I have shown laying a table a million times before, so I'm going to say thank you for the recipe. Now, I want to add in some vlog clips of laying the table outside, but I've done this so many times before. How can I make it different and interesting? They can feel repetitive if you've done them often. The key is to shift the perspective, mood, or story focus. Here are some ideas. Anchor in a tiny story. The dogs always steal the napkins. Setting a table where the garden decides your colour scheme. I like that. Change the camera perspective such as details first and overhead flat lay. Use the garden as a theme. Pick herbs into the jug as a centerpiece. This way the garden becomes part of the table or add a creative styling twist. I feel like a lot of those I do anyway. As you lay the table, talk to the camera or record a voiceover that shares something thoughtful. I think I'm going to do that one because also our guests are arriving in 30 minutes and I want to lay the table and prepare some flowers, so I'm going to go with option 5 here because then I can record the voiceover and make it more interesting in the edit. I'll go with option 5 as I'm short. Oh, I can dictate as I'm short on time. Hello? Maybe not. Below is a ready-to-use voiceover script for your table laying scene. There's something I love about this little ritual. Oh, I love it. Okay, let's do it. Okay, our guests are now going to be here in about five minutes, so Charlie and I have a little bit of a routine. Charlie doing food prep, I lay the table, and then just before our guests arrive, one of us, normally me, will whiz around with vacuum cleaner. We have got the Shark Duo Power Detect. This is amazing because it's almost got AI within it. It detects what floor surface you're vacuuming and how much suction it needs, and it's wireless and hands-free. Well, and also the thing that you've got to remember that's pretty epic is it self-empties. What? So when you put it on the base that charges it, it empties into that because it is a bit of paint with a handheld sort of whiz around vacuum like that. Yeah. You have to empty it every time, so that way you only empty the vessel in the machine once a week. I wondered why it was always so clean. Yeah, it's awesome. So clever. Well, my darlings, what a lovely day it has been, but also interesting filming two vlog clips side by side. I just asked, you might have predicted, that I asked ChatGPT how to help me end the vlog, subtly asking my audience to subscribe to the videos, and I really like how it wrote that out for me. Then it prompted me if I wanted a video description to match the tone of the vlog, so I will be using the exact description that ChatGPT has given me here. You can see it down below if you want to see what it wrote out for me, and it's even given me the pointers here where to put in the recipe, and I guess we could even put in the timestamps. I think tomorrow I'm going to sit down in the office, edit the vlog, and see if I can actually upload the vlog into ChatGPT to see if it'll give me any tech recommendations, any description box, SEO tips, and maybe even do the cards for me. So we'll see if ChatGPT can help me from a tech point of view, and then I guess once I've had a watch of the video we can have a little chat about how we feel about it, and how, if at all, I will use ChatGPT moving forward, and how we think it's going to impact the industry. Have I enjoyed doing it today? It's been useful for prompts like the recipe, and I guess the voiceover scripting could have saved me a lot of time, but it definitely feels like it's taken the human side out of the vlog, and that's what I love sharing the most. I feel like if I knew that, if I knew I was watching someone who was just performing a ChatGPT video, I would be second-guessing everything. Like even now I'm sure some of you are wondering if what I'm saying now is real, or if it's what ChatGPT has told me to say, and I don't think I like that. I don't know. It's just so black mirror and weird to me. But yeah, anyway, I'm gonna sleep on that thought, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Hello again my darlings, it is now a couple of days later. We have edited the vlog up to what you've just seen, and we've also played around with the description box, the thumbnails, and a few other SEO bits. So it obviously hasn't gone live yet because I'm filming this and you're watching it, but I thought I would just kind of share some thoughts now that I've seen it edited and played around with a few other bits and bobs, aside from the filming of the video, how ChatGPT can help with the description box and the kind of work that goes into actually uploading. I would say let's start with the positives. It's nice sometimes to just have someone or something to bounce ideas off and to improve your work. It does feel like cheating in an exam, but I guess having a software that enables you to basically improve on your existing ideas, that is quite useful. I found the recipe exceptionally useful, the graphic that you would have seen on the screen was literally a copy and paste, could have taken hours but took a matter of seconds, less than a minute, and I think that using it for advice, for example like with the herbaceous border to fact check myself, really really useful. However, the main negative, I would say, is in my opinion the lack of authenticity that I feel comes across in the early part of this vlog. I really hope that most people will have watched to the, I don't know what it was, 15 minute mark where I revealed what was actually going on, because my fear now is that some people will have discovered this vlog for the first time, and discovered my channel, and just thought, wow there's something off with her. Because I think that even though there is a camera, an editing software, and a screen between us, I do feel that you can pick up on whether people are genuine or not, and I don't feel that I came across very authentic or genuine in the vlog at the beginning of this video. And I guess authenticity is something that Charlie and I really pride ourselves on, we never pretend to be anything that we're not, and we, I like to think that we show reality, we show our real life, and it's, we're not pretending to do anything different. So to essentially act in the beginning half of the video, even though it was acting, it was essentially acting what I normally do, but doing it on someone else or something else's terms, and it just didn't feel right, it felt icky, and that's certainly not something that I will be doing again. I won't be using chat GPT to script my lines to you. Help with the voiceover to make something seem a little bit more magical? Maybe, but I don't know, how do you feel about that? How do you feel knowing that I could or anyone could potentially use chat GPT to help them structure content? I think I mentioned this earlier on in the video, but one thing for me that worries me a little bit but also presents an opportunity in the content creator industry, and I think this is something that we really need to think about if any of you guys watching are also content creators, is that using this software really takes the humanness out of this industry, and I think that the humanness is what gives this industry its magic, because a lot of times when I meet people in real life and they say, gosh Josie you're just like you are on camera, I love to hear that. Sometimes people say you're even sillier in real life and I love to hear that too, but I think when you're watching a TV show there are many layers of producers attached to that, many layers of editing, and often people can be portrayed in ways that is different to who they genuinely are, and I think that because of that people, especially during lockdown, they were craving that real human connection and that real person, human part of content, and that is what hopefully you find videos like this normally provide, it's that human connection. Even though I'm not sat in the room with you, I think that over the last 10 years I've become so comfortable with the camera that it feels like I'm just chatting to a friend, this is exactly how I would be talking if I was chatting to a friend, and I think that using a software like ChatGPT just removes that friendliness and that authenticity and that human side, so in terms of an opportunity in the industry, I think anyone that can create content that just shows their human side, whether it's them being silly and imperfect, that's the magic that I really don't want to lose, and I think anyone that's able to really harness that magic and that human connection is going to do well. Well I've got one minute left on this memory card so I'll wrap things up quickly, I will just end on a slightly comical note. Let's not be asking ChatGPT to create thumbnails for us, because this is the selection of thumbnails. Why did it warp my face? I have no idea what it did there, but we took inspiration from these and created our own version in our normal style. I will be using ChatGPT for the title and for the first part of the description box, and I think that's quite useful. I will always read it over and make my own edits and tweaks to it, but things like that, the hashtags within the video, it's useful, it's useful for some of the tech stuff. I didn't use ChatGPT for any of the editing or any of the main part of the description box, some things humans are just better at, and yeah, it's been a really interesting experiment. I hope that it's not been too weird for you guys, and I'd love to know your thoughts. It's a scary topic because it's a big topic, and I know that it's impacting so many industries, and it's just been quite fun to see if there are ways that I can embrace it, but I think I've definitely found my limits. So my darlings, thank you so much for watching, please let's chat about how you found this in the comment section down below. This is definitely the weirdest video I've ever put out, but I really hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you will come back for the next ones, and I promise they won't be ChatGPT scripted, you've got my word. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye!