Introducing: ThisText AI
Grab your phone.
If you’re already on your phone, tap this link 🔗 or:
Text: explain this
to: 866-733-2202
With that one simple step, you’re ready to try my latest AI project.
About a month ago I was floating in my pool. I was staring at something, and was curious about it. I didn’t feel like Google Searching, telling ChatGPT about it, or doing much work – remember I was floating.
Then I had this idea.
“What if I could use AI faster by skipping all the accounts and apps. And what if I didn’t even have to tell it anything, just get answers immediately”?
Summer in Southern California has that effect on me and I’m here for it. It also might have been the beer.
Then I remembered a feature of my Meta Ray-Ban glasses where you can have it describe what you’re seeing. The first version was pretty rudimentary, and I didn’t use it much because it’s kind of a novelty. I then later realized you could have a conversation with the description & it dawned on me…
Let’s just text with AI using our everyday devices.
And since not everyone was going to invest $300+ in Ray-Bans and give all that data to Facebook, I started building. It was going to work the best with Make.com 🔗 I use a few of these ‘no-code’ platforms because they offer such an incredible speed-to-market advantage it’s unreal. I chained together some basic SMS/MMS flows with SlickText 🔗 and OpenAI’s Vision AI, and it was all coming together.
Trying to think of how to prompt engineer this I asked myself, what’s the single most common reason I’d want to text an image and get a response.. and landed on “I just need something explained to me”.
This brought my idea to life and I started finding all these incredible ways to use it:
![](https://jimcarter.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ExplainThisAI-SS-1024x718.jpg)
Like:
- Asking how to make a specific plant healthy again
- Extracting what portion of nutrition facts matter to me
- Trying to figure out what the *&^% is wrong with my washing machine – yes, my AI tool not only figured out the Model number from the picture, it understood the error code and walked me through a fix.
The more I used it, the more I loved it.
Not just because I built it but because I love that it’s available 24/7, doesn’t require an account with a different big service, is searchable via my phone (because it’s text is in my messages) and more.
On my last Office Hours session with my private slack community (read to the bottom for more on that) I demoed this live and gave first look access to my members. They helped me test it, and called out some pain points which I quickly fixed all of, and decided to make this live.
It’s in Alpha, it will probably break, but that’s why I have it set up as a free preview for you to try/test and let me know how it works!
Just like my other AI projects, I’m thinking bigger than just one thing at a time, building networks not services.. and I have plans to release more of these like:
- Translate This – so everything you send comes back in your preferred language
- Help This – deep evaluation of the problem in the picture and offers instant fixes
- Fix This – evaluates products you need and gives you a shopping list
- Enlarge This – for seniors or those that need a little help to take whats in a photo and type it out for you
..and about 20 more out-there idea like.. Rizz This – for the Gen Z’s out there to send screenshots of their texts and have it come back with a suggested message to send back. haha, this one is fun to test.
But for now, explain this is my first shot to test the waters and see who finds it helpful.
The first seven messages every month are free and to unlock it, I’m doing unlimited for just four bucks a week.
Yep, that’s it for those that want to use AI in a simple, no-tech way. My plan is to open the whole network of other projects above to those that unlock unlimited so there’s always a way to come back to AI, anytime you need it.
It would mean the world to me if you tried it and gave it a shot. Again all you have to do is text: explain this
to: 866-733-2202
Then text your first photo right after, it’s that easy.
BIG NEWS: Opening My Slack Community Again 🎉
Aside from serving teams at Bara Agency (and building our incredible AI startup there) there’s only one other way to work with me directly, besides 1:1 which I’m at capacity for.. and that’s my Private Closed AI Slack Community.
I freaking LOVE this group of entrepreneurs, leaders, and those that are just AI curious. I post about the topics I find, hold monthly Office Hours for this group and deep dive on request for the projects I build (just like ThisText AI) which is getting a new project channel this week.
A few months ago I decided to close it and switch to waitlist mode, and I’m opening it up again to just a handful of people.
Join the waitlist 🔗 by this Thursday the 25th and you’ll get an email from me with a special link to join.
I’ll be closing the doors to this community again shortly after.