Lost your slippers? Ask ChatGPT: Goa man uses AI to find his clogs at temple

BHOPAL: Losing your footwear outside a crowded temple is frustrating enough. Finding it among hundreds of almost identical pairs? That is a whole different level of trouble.
But Shubhang Borkar, a Goa-based man visiting the Mahakal Temple in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, had an unlikely solution: he asked ChatGPT to find them.

After completing his darshan, Borkar struggled to pick out his clogs from the crowded footwear racks outside the temple. So instead of rummaging through the piles himself, he decided to put artificial intelligence to work.

Borkar first photographed the rows of footwear and then uploaded the images to ChatGPT, along with a separate photograph showing what his clogs looked like. He told the chatbot that he had lost his footwear at the temple and asked it to identify his pair in the photographs.
He continued photographing different sections of the racks and sending the images to the AI.

After analysing the pictures, ChatGPT eventually pointed him towards a specific pair. According to a video shared by Borkar, the chatbot directed him to check the right side of the rack, around the middle of the pile and just below it. Borkar checked the spot — and, sure enough, found his missing clogs.

Borkar later shared the experiment on Instagram under the rather fitting title, “Used ChatGPT to find my lost clogs.” He describes himself as a “hacker on weekdays (cybersec), explorer on weekends”.

So while ChatGPT may not be ready to replace Sherlock Holmes just yet, it has apparently added “temple slipper detective” to its growing list of unexpected talents.