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Happy Sunday,
Today I'm showing you how to take the oldest, most damaged photo you own and bring it back looking sharper than the day it was taken, then breaking down what OpenAI just did to the free plan (they took the limits off, and it's a much bigger deal than it sounds), and finishing with the five boring documents sitting in a drawer right now that you should genuinely put through AI this week.
Let's get into it.
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IN THIS EMAIL
» Bring your oldest photo back to life
» ChatGPT just went unlimited and free
» 5 documents you should run through AI
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🧠 TRY THIS TODAY
Bring Your Oldest Photo Back to Life
You know the photo. The cracked, faded, slightly water-damaged one that somebody in the family has been guarding for forty years. Or the version of it a friend posts on Facebook once a year with "look what I found in a box" underneath, at roughly the resolution of a potato. Maybe it's your grandparents. Maybe it's your parents. Maybe it's you in it, and if it is, you already know exactly which photo I'm talking about.
Nobody's ever done anything with it, because until pretty recently there was nothing you could do with it. That's changed. You can now hand it to AI and get it back repaired, properly colored, and sharper than it has ever looked, including sharper than the original print.
Step 1: Get it onto your screen. If it's a physical print, take a photo of it on your phone and send it to your computer. If it's already on your computer, even easier, just use that.
Step 2: Upload it to ChatGPT (this one has to be ChatGPT, Claude doesn't generate images) and paste this in. Every line in here is doing a job, so use it exactly as it is:
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Restore this old photograph. Repair the cracks, scratches, creases and missing pieces, clean up the damage, and color it naturally for the era it was taken in. Recover as much real detail as you can in the faces, the fabric and the background, and give it back to me at the highest resolution you can, sharp enough to print large. Keep every face exactly as it is. Do not change anyone's features, their expression, their age, or the composition of the photo. Natural skin tones, period-accurate clothing colors, and leave a little bit of film grain so it still looks like a real photograph and not a painting.
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The "keep every face exactly as it is" line is the whole trick, and it's the bit everyone leaves out. Without it, the AI quietly beautifies everyone. It softens the faces, straightens the teeth, and hands you back a photo of people who look almost like your family. Leave that line in and it stays them.
Then do this one, because this is the part nobody expects. Stay in the same chat and say:
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Now tell me everything you can work out about this photo. What year was it most likely taken, and what makes you say that. What are they wearing and what does that tell you. Where in the world does this look like. What is happening in the background that I probably never noticed. Tell me what you are confident about and what you are only guessing at.
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It'll date the photo off the clothes, the cars, the furniture, the hairstyles, and start pointing out things in the background you've looked past a hundred times. People find out things about their own family photos that nobody alive could have told them.
Honestly, this is one of the most wholesome things I've seen AI do. Photo restoration is a real job that real people charge real money for, and it takes them days. Now it's a prompt. Get it printed and framed and it's one of the best gifts you'll ever give somebody, for about the cost of the frame. Pick whoever has been holding onto that photo the longest, hand it to them on their birthday, and watch what happens.
I'm not going to pretend it nails it every single time. Sometimes you'll need to run it twice, and it does invent the parts it genuinely can't see. But give it a try today, because when it lands it's really something.
Get my full photo restoration guide →
🚨 THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
ChatGPT Just Went Unlimited and Free
On Thursday OpenAI took the limits off. Anyone on the free plan now gets unlimited chats. No more hitting a wall halfway through the thing you were actually trying to work out. No more "you've reached your limit, come back in three hours" at exactly the moment it was getting good.
Here's why this is a much bigger deal than a boring pricing update. The number one reason people never properly got into AI is that they were never going to pay twenty dollars a month to find out if they liked it. So they'd try it free, get five messages and a mediocre answer, decide the whole thing was overhyped, and never come back. That reason just stopped existing. If you've got somebody in your life who has been saying "I don't really get AI" for two years, this is the week to sit them down with it, because for the first time nothing is going to stop them halfway through.
Free users also get a brand new Think button. Normally it answers you fast. Hit Think first and it slows down and properly reasons through the problem before it says a word, and on anything complicated the difference is night and day. That was locked behind the paid plans until Thursday. And all of this is running on their brand new model, GPT-5.6. The free version is called Luna, and this is not some watered-down free tier, it is genuinely good. If you are on Plus or Pro you get the bigger one, Sol, along with a slider so you can choose how hard it thinks.
Just to put in perspective how fast all of this is moving. The model everybody was talking about when ChatGPT first blew up was GPT-4, and to get your hands on it you paid twenty dollars a month and were capped at 25 messages every three hours. That was the premium tier, and people were happily queuing up for it. It could hold about 6,000 words in its head at once. The new one holds around 780,000. That is more than a hundred times as much, and it is the version you now get for nothing.
Two quick things. Unlimited means chatting, there are still caps on file uploads, images and the other tools, so it is not a complete free-for-all. And it is rolling out over this week rather than landing everywhere at once, so if there is no Think button when you open it today, just give it a few days.
Go and try the Think button →
💡 SAVE THIS
5 Documents You Should Run Through AI This Week
Most people use AI for the fun stuff and never once point it at the boring paperwork that quietly controls their money. Which is mad, because reading forty pages in nine seconds and telling you the one line that's going to bite you is the thing it is genuinely best on the planet at. Works in ChatGPT or Claude, both are fine. Here are the five I'd dig out this week, and a quick line to paste with each one.
1. Your phone and internet bills. Almost everybody is quietly out of contract and still paying the loyalty price, which is always the highest price. "What am I paying, what is this company advertising to new customers right now, and what should I say to get moved onto that."
2. Your insurance policy. Car, home, travel, health, whichever ones you've got. Nobody reads these and the entire business model depends on that. "List everything this policy does not cover, in plain language, starting with the exclusions most people assume they are covered for."
3. Whatever you pay to live where you live. Your lease, your mortgage paperwork, your rental agreement. Biggest number in most people's lives, least read document they own. "Pull out every date, every fee, every automatic increase, and exactly what happens if I leave early." Then put those dates in your calendar the same day.
4. Twelve months of bank and card statements. Export them and hand the whole lot over. Not to be told off about your coffee. "Find everything recurring, especially anything that renewed silently, any free trial that turned into a subscription, and any small charge I would struggle to identify."
5. Anything you're about to sign. A job offer, a quote from a builder, a gym membership, a set of terms you're two clicks from accepting. This is the one that actually saves you, because it's the only one where you can still walk away. "What am I agreeing to here that I would regret in a year."
And when you want the full version on any of them, this is the one I use:
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Here is a document I signed and never properly read. Explain it back to me like I am twelve, in plain language, with no jargon. Then tell me: what am I actually paying, what am I locked into and until when, what happens if I cancel or leave early, and what is the single worst term in here for me. Finish with the exact wording I should send to renegotiate it, and what a fair result would look like.
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That last line is the one that pays. It doesn't just tell you you're overpaying, it writes you the message to send. And a contract is a contract anywhere in the world, so this one isn't just for my American readers.
Two quick things. Black out your account numbers and full card numbers before you upload anything. It doesn't need them to do the job. And remember this is the smartest friend you have ever had reading your paperwork, not a lawyer and not a financial advisor, so if it flags something serious go and get a real one.
Get my full document checklist →
Go and find that photo today. It's a Sunday, it takes ten minutes, and it's the nicest thing I've put in one of these in a long time. Then if you've got twenty minutes after that, do the phone bill one, because that's the one that pays for your month.
See you Wednesday.
Maverick
P.S. Want your business to actually show up inside AI? The brands that rank are seeing up to 3x the conversions. Get your free AI visibility score and see exactly where you stand inside AI.
P.P.S. If you're new here or you ever skip one, I've got a newsletter archive of all my past emails you can catch up on anytime.
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