Introducing Email Roulette.
I’m using AI to help stay in touch with my friends.
Using an iOS Shortcut and a custom-formatted NFC chip, I can automatically open up an email to a random friend from my address book. Now every time I walk by this snail-mail box, I can tap the NFC chip and open up an email to a random selection from my friends’ email addresses. This helps me stay in touch and makes me look like a super-thoughtful guy.

Big thanks to Chat-GPT for helping me figure this one out—we were chatting about automated ways to start conversations with friends and this idea emerged during our conversation. Chat-GPT gave me specific instructions on how to code this experience in the iOS Shortcuts environment—I had no idea how much stuff you can do with Shortcuts. After that, I used the NFC Tools app to set up the chip and placed it strategically in my neighborhood along my daily walk.

Enjoy!