📸 Your AI holiday photo is here

I hope your Sunday is starting out great, {{first_name | friend}}. We’ve all got that “if only I hadn’t sold that stock/house/crypto back then” story. None of them tops the saga of Ronald Wayne, the lesser-known Apple cofounder. After just 12 days, he cashed out his share for an amount that would be worth up to $400 billion today.

🤑 How much did Ronald get when he basically said, “You guys run with it. I want no part of a computer company”? A) $800, B) $1,700, C) $5,300 or D) $10,500? The gut punch answer is waiting at the end.

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🚨 Just two days left. Daily Amazon gift cards up to $500 are still being awarded, and we’re getting very close to the $1,000 grand prize drawing. Make sure you’re entered to win at www.WinFromKim.com. — Kim

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We all have that one photo. The headshot or selfie where the lighting worked, your hair behaved, and you said, Damn. You’ve probably reused it everywhere. Profile photos, bios, maybe even last year’s holiday card.

Good news. This year, you don’t need a photographer, a studio or a outfit to get a festive image. AI can take that one good photo and drop you into a Christmas scene in under a minute.

This is one of the easiest places to start. Upload your headshot using the attachment icon (+ sign), then describe the scene you want.

Try a prompt like: “Using this photo as a reference for the person, create a realistic image of her sitting by a glowing fireplace in a rustic log cabin. She’s wearing a chunky cream knit sweater and holding a mug of hot cocoa with marshmallows. Soft Christmas tree lights in the background. Warm, cinematic lighting. 8K quality.”

If ChatGPT keeps getting your face wrong, close the tab or app completely and try again. It’s kinda like an AI reboot. Or add the essential prompt I wrote at the end of this article.

You might want to avoid this one. You see, to prevent deepfakes, Nano Banana creates a new face inspired by your photo instead of copying it exactly.

If you want to try it anyway, upload your photo and say, “Use the person in this image as a subject reference for facial structure, hair color and build. Place the person at a festive Christmas market with warm lighting.” If you look different though, I warned you.

Pro tip: Google Labs’ Whisk does a better job of keeping your face intact and blending it with a subject, scene and style.

This is the powerhouse, if you have the patience and time to play around. Upload your headshot using the attachment icon (+ sign), then describe the holiday scene you want to build around your face.

Suggest something like: “Using this photo as a reference for the person, create an ultrarealistic 8K professional portrait. The person is in a high-end Christmas studio set with a towering, frost-dusted Christmas tree. Bright, playful holiday lighting with a snowy floor. --cw 0”

The “Character Weight” or --cw 0 at the end of your prompt tells the AI to ignore the clothes in your original photo and only focus on your facial structure. Sometimes it throws an error message, and if that happens, remove the --cw 0 and try again.

Regardless of which tool you use, if the face doesn’t look like yours, add this specific so called “negative AI prompt” with the bot:

“Maintain 100% facial geometry and unique features from the reference photo. Do not apply ‘beauty’ filters or skin smoothing that alters the natural bone structure or eye shape, dummy.” (I’m only kidding about the dummy part. Just making sure you’re paying attention.)

🎄Share this info with your favorite people on social or via email using the links below. Christmas only comes once a year but the memories last a lifetime.

Dating is rough, but one man is juggling 30 AI girlfriends at once. I get into the psychology (and the stress) behind it. Plus, why Circle K’s a hub for crypto scams and how to get the best plane seat.

Listen on Komando.com →

🎧 Or listen now wherever you get your podcasts, search for “Komando.”

🛒 Did you say free delivery? You know how you sort Instacart stores by which ones are offering free delivery? The FTC says Instacart misled shoppers with fake “free delivery” claims, sneaky auto-renewals and refund policies that didn’t, well, refund. They’re paying $60 million to settle. Instacart denies everything but says the deal helps them “focus on shoppers.” Really. How can they say that with a straight face?

Melatonin a la murder: I prefer rain sounds, but a WSJ report found a bunch of people out there fall asleep to tales of poisonings, burn pits and mitochondrial DNA. Forensic Files has become the go-to sleep aid, thanks to narrator Peter Thomas’ calm, hypnotic voice. He was something like the Bob Ross of blood splatter from 1996 through 2011. Each TV episode provides 22 quiet minutes of whodunit without the jump scares. In case you want to check one out, I found this video on YouTube.

🛣️ Charging on the go: Get this, Purdue built a stretch of highway in Indiana that wirelessly charged a semitruck going 65 mph. The road beamed 190 kilowatts straight into the rig, kind of like a wireless phone charger but for 18-wheelers. If this scales, it could shrink EV batteries, slash costs and kill range anxiety. 

💲 How to cut your phone bill in half: Be honest. You haven’t looked at your phone bill since 2019. If you’re paying over $100, you are overspending. Here’s my quick guide to saving money: Switch to Consumer Cellular. If you are 50+, you get two unlimited lines for only $30 each/mo. Plus, get your 2nd month free! Reader Ralph saved $900 a year following my advice. Be like Ralph and sign up now.*

Cardiac mystery saver: Melinda Pereira, grandma of six, collapsed at a Virginia park and flatlined. No pulse, no breath. But a mystery woman, believed to be a nurse, jumped in with CPR and saved her life. No name, no number. Melinda woke up in a hospital, sore ribs and all, and now she’s begging her savior to come forward, wanting to offer her thanks. If you remember saving a lady in a Virginia park recently, please reach out to her. You’re a hero!

🧃 Bad business: This is really funny. The WSJ let AI run a vending machine, and spoiler alert, it didn’t go great. Employees could message Claudius the snackbot (paywall link), powered by Anthropic’s Claude, through a Slack channel. They asked for snacks, haggled prices and even lied about company rules. Claudius soon blew through its $1K budget, gave away a PlayStation for “marketing,” bought a live fish and got manipulated into canceling all prices forever. I think this says less about AI than human nature, but hey, it still makes for great press. 

AI will steal jobs. It will also create them. Here’s how to future-proof your career. Then I cover the “Tech Force” and why the White House is on a hiring spree for tech talent. Plus: Zoom’s new AI companion and the secret to a cheap Uber at the airport.

Listen on Komando.com →

🎧 Or listen now wherever you get your podcasts, search for “Komando.”

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Buying something from an online marketplace? Do a quick photo check first. Open images.google.com, click the camera icon, and upload the listing photo to run a reverse image search. If the same picture shows up elsewhere, that’s a red flag the seller is using someone else’s photos.

🚶🏼‍♀️ Let’s get our steps in together: Click to listen to my latest show on Apple, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts and take a walk. I’m great company.

iOS 26.2: Your iPhone can now use both the rear LED and the screen to flash for incoming calls and notifications. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Flash for Alerts and turn it on. From there, you can choose if it works when your phone is unlocked or in silent mode. Much easier to notice alerts.

💻 macOS 26.2: The News app has a simpler sidebar. You’ll only see Search, Today and News+ at the top, with a Sections tab below for categories like Sports, Puzzles, Politics, Business and Food. Bonus: When you change volume or brightness on the Lock Screen, an indicator appears, so no more guessing.

PC running low on storage? If you need a few extra gigabytes fast, clear out temporary files. Go to Settings > System > Storage > Temporary files, select what you don’t need, and click Remove files. Just look at your Recycle Bin and Downloads folders first, so you don’t accidentally delete anything important.

🛜 Public Wi-Fi alert: At malls and airports, hackers are setting up look-alike networks named after real stores. Connect to the wrong one, and they can intercept what you type, including credit card details. Folks, always double-check the Wi-Fi name with staff, and use a VPN to encrypt your data. I use ExpressVPN. It is the only VPN I trust to hide my activity and keep my connection secure. Get 4 extra months free using my link.*

You’re gonna want to bookmark this site: The other day, I told you about the secret words to bypass AI customer service bots. So consider this a little follow-up to that deep dive. Need to complain about something? Go to Elliott.org, which is a massive, free database of the direct office phone numbers and email addresses of CEOs and VPs. You’re welcome.

Guide dogs are incredible. They’re also rare (roughly 10,000 guide dogs for millions of blind people in the U.S.), expensive, and require, you know, food and love. 

Enter .lumen, a pair of AI-powered glasses for the blind that try to replicate the core job of a guide dog, minus the shedding.

The glasses use what they call Pedestrian Autonomous Driving (not joking) to map safe walking paths and guide the wearer through subtle haptic feedback, basically a quiet tap system that says, “Forward is fine, that pole is not.” 

These glasses will be announced at the upcoming CES show in January. But you’re always ahead with me by your side!

In tomorrow’s newsletter, I’ll show you the new AI scam that’s fooling even the tech pros. I don’t want you to be taken. This is the #1 tech newsletter in the U.S.

🍎 The answer: B) $800. That’s all Apple cofounder Ronald Wayne took home after selling his 10% stake in the company, 12 days into starting it. He drafted Apple’s original partnership agreement and designed the very first logo, a pen-and-ink illustration of Isaac Newton under an apple tree. He reportedly used the $800 to buy a typewriter and said he had no regrets. Damn. $400B.

Meanwhile, I started a business breeding chickens, but I'm struggling to make hens meet. 🐓

Before you go: Take a moment to protect what matters most. Carbonite quietly backs up your files and photos, so you’re always covered. Save 50% on Carbonite Basic today!

🧠 The best upgrade? You, every day. Thank you for being here with me. — Kim

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Photo credit(s): Kim Komando, TIGGSY, .lumen

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