Barnaby Edwards

I buried it alongside my parmesan in the Great Fire of London.

This morning’s adventure at the doctor’s surgery:

Me: I had a Covid jab yesterday at Boots and they gave me this slip to hand to you.

Nurse (looking at it): Well, I must say you’re in excellent shape for your age.

Me: Gosh, thank you.

(The nurse points out the year of my birth on the slip: 1669)

I Set A Trap To Catch Students Cheating With AI. The Result Was Deflating "I am no stranger to students trying to cut corners by copying and pasting from Wikipedia, but the introduction of generative AI has enabled them to cheat in startling new ways."

Well, this is deeply depressing.
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/set-tr...

4 in 10 students cheated?! Jesus. I suppose the solution is to make everything about live, handwritten, timed exam papers again. Or simply to fail anyone who uses AI to write their essays for them.

All the bronze ones are built to fit my body exactly - because they constructed the one in ‘Dalek’ just for me and then replicated it - but Nick still fits in it.

My fellow Dalek Operator @nicholaspegg.bsky.social is 6’3”.

Happy Doctor Who Day!

On the left: my first time as a Dalek operator (for the BBC’s ‘30 Years in the TARDIS’ in 1993).

On the right: me, still doing it.

62 years for the show. 32 years for me.

Ah, a common misunderstanding. Her portrait is framed, but Ingrid herself comes in a box.

Barnaby Edwards | Countess Dracula - postcard These postcards are made from thick high-quality matte paper, so they serve as a great addition to a gift or just a thoughtful written note to a friend. • Cardboard paper • Paper weight: 7.67–10.32 ...

And a postcard.

barnabyedwards.co.uk/shop/art-cul...

Barnaby Edwards | Countess Dracula - t-shirt Colour: black This unisex t-shirt is everything you've dreamed of and more. It feels soft and lightweight, with the right amount of stretch. It's comfortable and flattering for all. • 100% combed a...

And a T-shirt.

barnabyedwards.co.uk/shop/art-cul...

Barnaby Edwards | Countess Dracula - framed print Size: 16″×20″ Frame: black Make a statement in any room with this framed poster, printed on thick matte paper. The matte black frame that's made from wood from renewable forests adds an extr...

Also available as a framed print.

barnabyedwards.co.uk/shop/art-cul...

Remembering the great Ingrid Pitt, who died on this day in 2010.

Here's my portrait of her as Countess Dracula. The original - glazed, mounted and framed - is available to buy from here:

barnabyedwards.co.uk/shop/art-cul...

And you are The Look of Mortal Engines. Your covers capture Philip’s world perfectly. 🙂

And it’s fabulous! I narrated the audiobook a couple of months ago.

Generative A.I., the thing that drives our whole economy right now, is a perfect metaphor for the abject failure of imagination on the part of the powerful. Generative A.I. has no imagination and offers no new insights. It's a mere predictive engine that uses statistics to find the most likely next thing. What's the next word in a sequence, the next pixel in a picture? This is the opposite of imagination, which is so often about finding the least likely thing, the startling incongruity. I worry that so many of us are outsourcing our imaginations and our whole creative selves to these stochastic parrots.

Excellent speech by @charliejane.bsky.social about imagination in service to society. Great stuff.

buttondown.com/charliejane/...

Nigel Farage next, please.

YouTube video by Like Stories of Old Why Movies Just Don't Feel "Real" Anymore

We all feel it and here is the technical explanation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvwP...

ChatGPT Energy Consumption Visualized - BEUK

If you use AI, you are destroying the planet - regardless of the human cost. ChatGPT alone consumes almost a million bathtubs' worth of water every day and more electricity per year than 117 countries consume. And that's just one AI company.

www.businessenergyuk.com/knowledge-hu...

Reskeet with a time when you looked cool.

Remembering historian, travel writer and trans rights campaigner, Jan Morris, who died on this day in 2020. Among her many claims to fame, she was part of the team which conquered Everest in 1953.

Here's my portrait of her (on sale this month!):

barnabyedwards.co.uk/shop/art-lgb...

#LGBTQ+ 🏳️‍⚧️

Cost of abolishing university tuition fees = £17bn

Cost of making care homes free = £8.3bn

Cost of making trains free to use = £11bn

Cost of hitting net zero = £30.7bn

The annual cost of the above is £67bn, which happens to be the amount of money given in tax relief to the richest 20% of the UK.

Remembering feminist, writer and activist Audre Lorde, who died on this day in 1992.

Here’s my pen and ink portrait of her.

barnabyedwards.co.uk/shop/art-lgb...

Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine sign voice deal with AI company The voices of the Oscar-winning actors can now be used to create AI-generated versions in a new deal with ElevenLabs

Do NOT license your voice to ElevenLabs.

Their highest-paid actor made $30k last year. Sounds a lot, but that’s from 1.2 bn paid uses - $0.000025 per job. ElevenLabs charge 20 cents per 1,000 words. So they’re making at least 8,000 times what their artists are.

www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Happy birthday to the wonderful Bonnie Greer. We once had lunch together and she was pure heaven - funny, warm, generous and intelligent. When we parted, she kissed me on the lips and hugged me. I felt blessed.

Here’s my charcoal portrait of her.

barnabyedwards.co.uk/shop/art-peo...

I’ve just watched the Royal Ballet’s 2016 production of Frankenstein. It’s absolutely marvellous. If you’re expecting prettiness and frivolity, think again. It’s dark and brutal with hangings and child-murdering on stage. Wonderful stuff!

Art is a process of the human imagination. Even apparently random art is curated by humans. Decisions have been made (maybe terrible decisions, but the point stands) and the process is organic.

AI is merely a regurgitation of other things. There’s no thought process. It’s utterly inorganic. Dead.

The ‘eye of the beholder’ argument is meaningless. I could watch a football match and declare that someone was offside. But I’m a football ignoramus and anyone who knows football knows that I’m talking rubbish. My saying that ‘it’s in the eye of the beholder’ is unlikely to carry the day. 🤣

King Charles III gets new AI portrait by robot artist Ai-Da In 2024, Ai-Da made history when she became the first humanoid robot to sell her painting of Alan Turing for $1,084,800.

AI ‘artist’ creates portrait of King Charles. To no one’s surprise, it looks like a bad photo that a dog who’s eaten some putrid spaghetti has vomited all over.

AI is incapable of art. It’s an expensive photocopier, nothing more. Stop pretending it can replace humans.

www.bbc.com/newsround/ar...

Of course you may. Turns out I’m just as huge in Peru, so I’m rolling in it.

No, they’ve already deducted the 10%. I will, however, have to pay my agent 20% commission and also pay 20% income tax on it. Still, that leaves me with 0.6p.