Monocle Columnist Andrew Tuck on AI Haircuts, Robot DJ Hire Cars and a Radio Idea Starring Real Claudes

In his Monocle column, Andrew Tuck recounts his hairdresser's growing frustration with clients arriving with AI-generated images of themselves sporting Tom Cruise's hair, expecting the look to be achievable. The clients are often men in their sixties, and the hairdresser asks whether they failed to tell Claude about their thinning hair. After a conversation, they usually settle for "the usual." Tuck also proposes a radio feature called "Let's ask Claude!" that would use real people named Claude instead of the AI assistant, calling on figures such as Canadian ice-hockey player Claude Giroux, French photographer Claude Nori and Jean-Claude Van Damme to answer listeners' questions. On a weekend trip to Palma, he picked up a hire car that beeped constantly, comparing the noise to a Calvin Harris track and calling himself an unintentional mobile disco. He also describes a British Airways check-in moment when a young gay couple in their twenties, travelling in the airline's "group 0" priority category, politely corrected a bejewelled woman who had ordered them to step back, saying "so are we." The column was published on Monocle's website under the business/technology section.