With the advent of AIChat writing, does fiction face the same challenge that fine art painting faced when photography emerged? Will fiction have to abandon realism and reinvent language in order to stay in the storytelling game?
I don't think it's AI that is or is going to be driving the need for authors to reinvent the art of storytelling. I think the competition for readers in an increasingly difficult market is more than enough for any doomsaying a la Mike Cernovich.
I've heard that GPT-4 is already writing 60,000 word novels. In so many ways, humanity can't help but sow the seeds of its own demise. We are a self-destructive species.
AI writing still falls into the uncanny valley and requires a lot of editing today. It will never fully emerge from the uncanny valley because a human will always have to guide it and edit.
Even after it vastly improves, creative human minds will be needed to get the most out of it. Someone already coined a term for this. Prompt Engineers will be the new cheap content churners.
Lets use AI to write a romance between Fabio and a Raccoon to slap that cover onto.
AI recently attempted to reinvent a Nick Cave ballad. Nick Cave came down on it hard. A.I. can suck a bag of dicks. As Nick Cave said..."A.I. can't suffer. A.I. can't reach the spiritual. We are light years away from this type world.
I asked the AI to write a text about a distraught husband in minimalist realism style.
Here's what it came with. Thoughts?
Here is a short text written in the style of minimalist realism about a distraught husband:
John sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the wall. He had just received the news that his wife, Jane, had been in a car accident. She was in critical condition at the hospital and he didn't know if she would survive.
He tried to think back to the last time he had seen her, but his mind was foggy with fear and worry. He remembered telling her he loved her before she left for work that morning, but now he felt like he had taken those words for granted.
John clutched at his chest, feeling the weight of loss and uncertainty bearing down on him. He had never felt so alone.
He heard a knock at the door and got up to answer it. It was Jane's brother, come to take him to the hospital. John followed him out the door, feeling numb and disconnected from the world.
As they drove to the hospital, John couldn't help but think of all the things he wished he had said to Jane, all the moments he wished he had cherished more. He just wanted her to be okay, to come back to him.
When they arrived at the hospital, John was led to Jane's room where she lay, hooked up to machines and barely conscious. He took her hand, feeling the tears roll down his face. He promised her that he would never let go.
Fiction will not face an issue. Authors will face an issue. The same with fine art paintings. Art is still being made regardless. What will be challenged is the connection between the audience and creator. If the creator does not matter, then AI will have a space to exist.
This is a new take on Warhol's Soup Can. Danto's "What is Art?" will need to be re-written.
So again, Art will continue to be consumed. Will the audience care if it is hand made, or man made, as they consume? The future may be AI-made art to the specific taste of each viewer produced on demand.
A friend who is a high school teacher is understandably concerned. He tested out the latest AI software and asked it to write about why AI is bad for writing... and it came up with a really well-written piece on how AI is a bad thing. It was better than most of his students could do he said. In my debut novel, A Killer Story, I had the protagonist (a copywriter) almost hit a client for claiming AI would win a Pulitzer Prize within 10 years.
I don’t think so. An AI being able to deliver both enthralling narratives and having a unique style of prose -- it’s something that seems to me will be both difficult and unsustainable. Another thing -- death of the author be damned -- is that I think people like knowing that art -- art from every medium -- comes from a person, comes from thought, passion, and hard work and is not haphazardly spewed out in 10 minutes by some piece of coding. We’re seeing it already with artists -- people reject AI because there’s no “essence” to it. AI arguably denigrates art when it tries to produce it and think largely for that reason alone the arts will be fine. Until they build Terminator’s who are ready to go on book tours and face the backlash for writing something “controversial” but which was considered fine just a decade ago, I think we’re all good.
I have no experience with AIChat writing. But I've seen a bunch of auto-generated stuff and it's quite terrible. A confusing mess. Maybe over time that tech will improve. AI is slowly taking over! All we'll have to do is intentionally misspell a word to burn the language and BOOM, we still got our Minimalism lol
No matter how big of a help it provides, the current AIChat writing lacks intuition, personal experience and emotions. That’s the fuel for any story worth reading. My point is that it can't come up with something truly groundbreaking.
We’re not to worry yet. But If AIs somehow manage to also feel the world, become self aware. That’s when we will have real competition. And also not sure what’s the way forward when that happens. But here's hoping that day comes soon. It’ll be interesting.
I think it's worth bearing in mind that AI writing is, by definition, derivative, i.e. it works by harvesting vast amounts of data then producing what it thinks the consumer wants. This is already arguably true for a lot of media and art including fiction. So yes I imagine in a few years you could have AI writing the next MCU movie or what have you and audiences not being able to tell the difference.
But what about anything that we consider *good*, i.e. original and inspired? A fresh take on the human condition, something that taps into the deepest recesses of the psyche. I think if AI ever gets there, our species is done for, not necessarily because SkyNet or whatever will wipe us out, but because there be nothing left for us to do, no point to our existence.
My short-to-medium-term prediction is that the more derivative a piece of art, the more likely AI will displace it., which will deepen the divide between corporate normie garbage and the stuff that's actually original and worthwhile. So the arts will become further polarized, like it seems is happening everywhere else in our culture: politics, economics, health/wellness, etc.
I feel like with enough prompting AI can write great research papers and lesson plans, which my fellow teachers and myself have tested. Fiction however takes a creativity that I feel AI lacks at this point. Just like with the art we see it’s remixes of other artists work. Fiction would generate similar results currently I believe.
The AI is good at mimicking and Mickey Mouse-ing and you filling in the blanks in the hidden want that we want something dead to create an illusion of a live writer. Probably the average sausage novel by an AI will come out in a few months or so. It might be a wake up call for writers to be more human, personal and share what only human experience can give vs machine learning. Maybe good to get out of the Schroedinger Cat litter box, to be shaken and awaken by the AI:s progress.
I could see AI writing becoming prevalent in areas like screenwriting for kids' shows (the cheap kind), but I don't think it will become popular for other areas of fiction for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, computers do not have the necessary hardware for emotion. You need a physical, living body in order to experience emotion, and that's really the only way to write convincing characters.
Second, and more importantly, any published creative endeavour is ultimately about people connecting with people. The author is communicating something personal (unless we're talking about pure pulp, I guess), and readers connecting with the author through the work. Fans of a specific author will know things about him/her that they might identify with. A bad Stephen King novel is still a Stephen King novel, an his fans will read it for the connection. No matter how sophisticated an AI becomes, it is still just a series of mindless reactions to certain conditions. Ones and zeroes.
Jokes aside, ChatGPT is already churning out content for people who either admittedly can't write, or don't want to learn to write, or need something quick and don't want to pay a content creator. (Think marketing, blogs, technical writing, and so on.) Writers of this kind of content are already trying to get their heads around how to live with it, become more of a content wrangler than initial creator. The more the AI gets fed, the better it will become. Will it challenge or replace fiction writing? Isn't reinvention always in the works, the nature of things?
Consider the AI art generators. I wouldn’t plan to go to an AI gallery, but I would type in “werewolf + Picasso” to see what came up. And I would hit refresh until I got an image I liked and could share.
Likewise, I wouldn’t buy an AI book. But I’d be curious to read “werewolf + Hemingway.”
Who wouldn’t type in “Hamlet + Palahniuk?”
I think what everyone is supposing is AI’s weakness, its imagined inability to be distinctive, is going to be AI’s strength and attraction. Readers aren’t going to look to AI for an original narrative or style. They’re going to try reading mashups. The more distinctive an author’s style, the more likely someone is going to type in that author’s name and their fantasy wishlist dream story.
My aunt is a fine art painter and my cousin [her daughter] is a photographer. They seem to do alright. In fact, my aunt will often use my cousin's photos as a basis for her paintings.
As far as fiction, it's hard to say. I can't predict the future. As an optimist, I want to believe that people will more desire to read something that comes from someone's mind. To absorb what could only come from a person's combined lived experiences, perspectives and creativity. But not everyone is me.
Writing is an art as much as painting and as much as photography and as much as sculpting and as much as music. A computer is capable of recreating these things. Reordering them. But as much as they may be able to mimic feelings, they don't have them. There has to be something there. Something about the organic versus the machine...
This is good stuff to ponder and so I will keep pondering. Thanks 😊
Stop whackin to the panicporn and just write your sh#t. There are thousands of writers out there that are more talented, more honest and more incredible than you’ll ever be and your still working on your prose. So is there really any difference if that better writer is just an AI?
Relax. We still buy paintings, and a photo of a van Gogh goes for next to nothing if you haven’t noticed.
I suspect there’s no need to wait for the software to improve. You could do this now. Avoid legal challenges and type in your public domain mashup - “the Call of Cthulhu + the Great Gatsby” - use AI art to make an eye-catching cover in the style of your favorite comic book artist - AI generate a blurb from Dostoevsky - hire some current author with name recognition to make the project palatable - use the rest of your budget to get some poor no-name (like me, maybe) to ghost-write it.
AI will take on the role of editor and writing assistant. It cures writers block. It comes up with ideas you never would have. It can replace a traditional editor for grammar and spelling. It allows you to write a book in a month that would have taken you a year before.
It's all the singularity, we're just speeding it up until we merge with the technology... or fight to remain monkeys
The goal of AI writing, the pinnacle, seems to be writing that passes for human. A "successful" AI piece is one that passes for human, which, in my opinion, will mean that as the AI improves, its fiction will become more mundane, less interesting. The mundane will more readily pass as "real," where something mildly creative would feel like it was written by something non-human (sort of the way a space alien trying to seem human would probably not choose a persona like Iggy Pop's). AI writing is held back by this limitation, and as long as that's the goal, to pass as authentically human, I think it will become less interesting.
So, in the photography/painting analogy, it's like we have photographic technology, but it's only being used to take pictures of bowls of fruit.
I think this goal is non-arbitrary because while an AI might be able to do something wildly unique with fiction, will it be something a human reader is able to comprehend and enjoy? I would think the only way for AI writing to do break new ground would be to design an AI to write a book and then to design a separate AI reader to enjoy it. Because while the AI writer might be able to invent a new way of speaking and expressing, it'll always be handcuffed by the need to make it understandable for humans. As an example, an AI writer and AI reader could handle a book with hundreds of characters because they literally cannot forget. They'd only need to read a character description one time, and they'd have it down. This opens up a lot of avenues, but not for human readers.
Another complication: Is the photo a "better" representation of reality? When I take pictures of certain things, like something I see at night, it never looks the way it does to me in real life.
As the oft-quoted Tom Spanbauer says: Fiction is the lie that tells the truth truer.
(Which is where I think good application of photo filters come in: if you're using the filter to make something look closer to reality, the filter is the fiction, the lie, that brings the photo closer to the truth)
So, while an AI piece of fiction might be more accurate in details and more vivid in exact descriptions, will it have the ability to fictionalize things in a way that may less accurately express the reality, but MORE deeply convey the emotion.
There are so many of us, but they want us to believe we don't need each other anymore. Call any corporate business and a prerecorded voice is answering. If you are lucky, they still let you make touch tone selections. Most of the time you are repeating "Go back!" like a broken speak and spell trying to get the thing to work. They probably don't want us to call. They want a relationship where we have to shut up and give em' the money.
Restaurants are not much better. Touch screens take your order. You can see folks cooking through the zoo style window, but know one acknowledges the customers anymore. They just drop burgers onto a conveyor belt. It takes a ride like its on Mister Roger's trolley and ding! A plexiglass door slides open with your order. Something wrong with your order? Too bad. Be quite and give us your money.
While you drown your burnt nothing burger with Worcestershire, you can watch the news. Screens flash the usual local happenings. Drones dropping off packages on roofs instead of doorsteps. Robotic dogs armed with Terminator's blasters breaking and entering into the right apartment, but different people live there now. Social media says the internet is supposed to make you feel more connected while you scroll through this news, but I am not even sure if real people are in the chats anymore. Chat bots are the big new thing. They make money for big business. They sway political views by arguing with randos. They are supposed to help people feel less lonely while we all stare at the screens in Fahrenheit 451. We are now making meaningful connections with Rosey the Robot instead of making real friends. Wallstreet asks, why do we need people if silicon valley's automation can do it for us?
News videos hit our screens with automated voices. It is like listening to the NOAA weather radio while you try to wipe off the not-a-burger grease. If it gets old, you could always read the news right? Scrolling through CMM and the latest breaking news is automating jobs they thought could never be automated. Surgeons and therapists. Even writers. You can always tell which articles were pumped out by the AI machine as your scroll leaves a streak down the AI's output. The facts are there, but no feeling. Mr. Spock the AI is our new investigative journalist. Companies make record profits while the rest of us have to read in bland robot font. There is no room for nuance or human emotion. Just the "I am sorry, I didn't quite catch that, could you say that again?" cooing from the phone while you shout "No!" another almost-burger later. Just because the voice sounds nice doesn't mean anyone really cares. They just want you to stop complaining and pay for the subscription. If you can't pay, get a 5th job because they want that too. Quality no longer matters if the greediest puppeteers can save a few bucks.
I love the tech topics! I think right now people could tell, but will we reach point where we couldn't?
So I guess I’m the only person in the room who thinks AI is shit.
“Intelligence” has nothing to do with “creativity.” And those who insist humans are dispensable say far more about themselves than the current state of AI.
I have a writer friend that asked an AI to write in his style. He comment on it was that it was pretty close. It is scary. AI can analyze existing stories to make new but may lose "originallity". Writing does typically fit patterns which can easiy be reproduced. As time passes, people will not be able to tell the difference between what a person wrote and what AI did. Now, some AI written work lots like a rough draft.
Believe we are in Danny the Street territory. A career working in weird scotch wroth comics and Danny remains Morrison's strongest character. And with Donald Barthelme you have enjabments that a human only with a decision tree algorithm of their own would make. But the public appetite is the trickle to sell 3000 of his a year. As a joint effort like movies will AI outsell writers? Ask Chuck, how big is he 8n thr Phillipines where he should be Mr top of the popular. For communicating his calm state of mind while treating of sex with furniture. I guess a writer's union should sign oaths that writers give up on being dearly departed Barthelme, and all consent to write for widest dstrbtn like Chuck does. Telstar is the enemy two legs good, have to eject 4 legged all fours Will Vollman...
It might actually work in writing's favour- you'd have to seriously up your game, and perhaps it would highlight more imaginative and creative writers as it replaces those that aren't?
I'm inclined to say 'AI can fuck right off', but I have a natural aversion to anything that mentions or uses 'algorithms'.
I read in a collection of essays "Against Worldbuilidng and Other Provocations" by Alexis Kennedy (Fallen London literary game) that he isn't afraid that AI would in a foreseeable future takes a job for writer because even if the text writes AI, a human still has to check it makes sense and eventually makes edits. Making edits to makes sense of AI-generated text may be more difficult than writing story from scratch. Consider your head as more powerful than any AI. Text is different to images because you look at an image and see. You don't look at a book and see the story, you have to read it. Because of this, I believe A. Kennedy is right. AI won't replace humans in writing because you can't immediately see it, so it has to edited internally, not visually, and it may be easier just writing something from scratch. Either way, if it ever comes to and AI will try to replace humans, I think that what will happen is that imperfect "human" writing, writing with a particular voice, or slanted language will be Turing test (or anti-Turing test) that it wrote human and accepted by people who want to read people, not machines.
My experience is just that. My friend, an artist, she had these interesting AI pics and said to me she wants to do something with them. I said, aye, give me the prompts for the images, I feed them into AI-text generator, it creates a story and then I piece it together in Ren'Py and make an multimedia novel out of it. The first few went alright, but then the AI-text would become too random, too cumbersome to create a narrative, or something tangible. It was too repetitive in it's outputs even if it was random. We ended up ditching the AI-text ideas and wrote our own story for the images instead. I'm in the middle of making it now, else I'd send you link.
...
But I also think that one day someone who understands the tech comes along and use the algorithm not for a generative art, but for a creative art, the same way Warhol did for photography But it will be something no one can yet see. This is an interesting topic but I need to run because I'm late for work and outside it's terrible weather and it my blow me away. This text was definitively not written by AI. Hahaha (human laugh)
Photography—more or less—freed visual artists from the shackles of "the academy."
If photography never developed—pardon the pun—there never would have been the French Impressionists, Van Gogh, Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Fluxus, Gordon Matta-Clark, etc.
Everyone would still be trying to draw and paint "realistically." How bloody boring that would have turned out to be?
AI fiction writing is currently way off the mark, but in our lifetime I can imagine there being enjoyable AI literature.
However, even if AI was able to render a great novel (plot, character, themes, writing style and setting all engaging and sensible) I think it would still be missing the author factor. One of the great elements of human-written things is a mix of ambiguity and intent. I enjoy books not just for their content but for what they might reflect about the author - their views, their experiences and so on. Did writer X intend their fiction to come across as pro death penalty? Did writer Y's experience of poverty influence how the characters were written? How much of this book by Z is autobiographical? The questions don't need an answer (I may not be able to find out a single thing about the author), but it is often what makes a book stick in my head. I also think a book can feel more meaningful to me just on the basis of the themes someone chooses to write about. It can make me feel more connected to humanity to know that someone out there has the same ridiculous fixations as me.
I have a feeling once the novelty wears off and easy money has been grabbed that it will fall into writing porn and have a devoted following for a niche but those people wouldn’t want to read the kind of fiction we all love and write anyway. I would venture to guess I’ll be losing the readers who don’t know I exist anyway and who love the Big Bang Theory.
Of course fiction writing faces a challenge with AI generated language, but fiction will not have to change to stay relevant. The question really boils down to, "Why do you read?"
I read for many reasons. I read G.R.R Martin to lose myself in a fantasy world. I read Palahniuk to think more critically of social and theological ideas, and I read C. Liu to look to the future of humanity as a species.
If an Artificial Intelligence was able write a story that challenged my morals and ideals, I'd add it to the list above. I don't read books for anyone but myself. Unfortunately, that means I don't much care who's name is on the front page of my novel, or where my money goes when I buy it. If I really cared, I'd use ITunes to buy each song I ever wanted to listen to and I'd abandon Audible credits to pay for books directly. Hell, I'd wear a T-shirt that says "Burn your local library!"
That's not why I read. I read for me, and I'll eager most other people do as well. To me the idea that AI generated media is a threat to content producers is selfish of media generators. AI will keep improving until all jobs are obsolete, or until all of this planet's resources are consumed. I know that's the case because I carry a black square emitting loads of radiation next to my ball sack every day for mere convenience. If I'll put myself at risk for the undeniable utility of a cell phone, there's no end to what I'd accept as a consumer. I also know I'm right because I'm not special at all, I'm the most average guy I know. We're all in the same boat.
I don't think so. People are always drawn to thing that are authentic. Photography can be considered an art all its own because a human being is still behind the camera. AI storytelling would be deemed fraudulent, and people will still seek out 100% human authors. Plus, I don't think any machine could match the power of the human imagination.
Here's my hot take. I think the advent of AI writing is going to drive the market towards interest in REAL stories from REAL people 🥰📙 There's a reason AI can't depict fingers or hands in their photo renderings... No AI can accurately capture the human touch, literally and figuratively, and I mean that in the most flourishy way possible. What do we have a "hand" in that a machine can't do better than us? ...Living a life. We've beat the algorithm on that one. AI can write nonfiction educational things better than a human simply due to it's ability to pull information, sort it and spit something out. I see a great arguement to why it cannot write good fiction because a human author is so unique, but if the market is flooded with deceptively convincing, entertaining enough fiction authored by a fucking machine that can emulate styles- who knows how we are even going to know what's "real" and what "isn't." I hope it's not the end of human-authored fiction, but there's one thing AI can't take from us if it is: *Our* stories. Tales of a life well (or not-so-well) lived. Unapologetic authenticity in a world rife of "manmade horrors beyond our comprehension."
This is a very difficult question. The ambiguity is almost relentless.
Going through the example you gave, of photography, which is good, but anachronistic towards the topic. In photography, even if it's a faster technology to a debatable similar result, there's always a doing. There's always a craft, somehow, and this craft doesn't remove the limitation of creating. With the AI aspect, it seems that the exponential limit is present but in a very different way. For me it is there in a infinite possibility of abstraction, and in its limitlessness it can remove the necessary thresholds that constrain the doing of any particular artistic endeavor. Maybe creating new ones, sure. But through those new ones wouldn't create a new paradigm in the collective idea of what it is to be human? Just by thinking this it bruises my mind.
Regarding the AI in the sense of science, statistic, data analysis, etc, in that regard the fastness is a bonus. And a very good one, i would say. In Art, for instance, it sounds wrong.
It is impressive how much you can twist the idea and the problem of this matter... or maybe i'm being like any older person that frights towards the new thinking the new will eradicate the prior.
I’m so happy you posted this. I was going to pose this same question to you at some point. I haven’t messed with Chat GPT yet, but I’ve thought about asking it to write a Chuck Palahniuk novel or Stephen King or whoever else just to see what it would spit out.
I will say that I read an interesting article today about a whole new market that’s emerging now that is software that will supposedly check text to determine if it was written by AI or is in fact a human artist. As you probably know, CNET recently got caught using AI to write their articles. It ended up that many pieces of information were found to be inaccurate and some to be even plagiarized. I’m hopeful that programs like the above will help to counteract things like this and “deep fakes”. As you have always said -- people don’t care about character information dumps so much anymore. Because it always comes back to “what’s your source?” This new dynamic only complicates that issue.
On another note, I’ve also seen postings of people creating “original art” for customers by having them submit photos and then generating AI images using those photos, tracing them, and then painting them to pass them off as their own work and selling them on places like Etsy and Fiverr. The years ahead will definitely get weird!
Eventually yes. Have you ever read any AI writing? It’s so hilariously dumb.
...for now.
I don't think it's AI that is or is going to be driving the need for authors to reinvent the art of storytelling. I think the competition for readers in an increasingly difficult market is more than enough for any doomsaying a la Mike Cernovich.
I've heard that GPT-4 is already writing 60,000 word novels. In so many ways, humanity can't help but sow the seeds of its own demise. We are a self-destructive species.
AI writing still falls into the uncanny valley and requires a lot of editing today. It will never fully emerge from the uncanny valley because a human will always have to guide it and edit.
Even after it vastly improves, creative human minds will be needed to get the most out of it. Someone already coined a term for this. Prompt Engineers will be the new cheap content churners.
Lets use AI to write a romance between Fabio and a Raccoon to slap that cover onto.
However it affects the market, I’m afraid it won’t quell my incessant need to keep writing—no matter how futile.
Plot driven fiction might be the first to go as it is very pattern driven.
More psychological/emotional pieces may have a longer hand before needing to worry.
Style driven fiction is probably a coin toss, depending on whether any writer's patterns of language are obvious to the AI or she manages to surprise.
I wonder if the AI knows/is efficient in replicating minimalist realism fiction.
These are all very uninformed assumptions.
It's a good tool to find tropes, too.
I had the AI outline a few stories, to see what came out.
Funny.
Apparently, romcom likes single 25 year old ambitious lawyers who have trouble finding life balance and love.
AI recently attempted to reinvent a Nick Cave ballad. Nick Cave came down on it hard. A.I. can suck a bag of dicks. As Nick Cave said..."A.I. can't suffer. A.I. can't reach the spiritual. We are light years away from this type world.
Of course I had to try.
I asked the AI to write a text about a distraught husband in minimalist realism style.
Here's what it came with. Thoughts?
Here is a short text written in the style of minimalist realism about a distraught husband:
John sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the wall. He had just received the news that his wife, Jane, had been in a car accident. She was in critical condition at the hospital and he didn't know if she would survive.
He tried to think back to the last time he had seen her, but his mind was foggy with fear and worry. He remembered telling her he loved her before she left for work that morning, but now he felt like he had taken those words for granted.
John clutched at his chest, feeling the weight of loss and uncertainty bearing down on him. He had never felt so alone.
He heard a knock at the door and got up to answer it. It was Jane's brother, come to take him to the hospital. John followed him out the door, feeling numb and disconnected from the world.
As they drove to the hospital, John couldn't help but think of all the things he wished he had said to Jane, all the moments he wished he had cherished more. He just wanted her to be okay, to come back to him.
When they arrived at the hospital, John was led to Jane's room where she lay, hooked up to machines and barely conscious. He took her hand, feeling the tears roll down his face. He promised her that he would never let go.
Fiction will not face an issue. Authors will face an issue. The same with fine art paintings. Art is still being made regardless. What will be challenged is the connection between the audience and creator. If the creator does not matter, then AI will have a space to exist.
This is a new take on Warhol's Soup Can. Danto's "What is Art?" will need to be re-written.
So again, Art will continue to be consumed. Will the audience care if it is hand made, or man made, as they consume? The future may be AI-made art to the specific taste of each viewer produced on demand.
It's highly complicated.
A friend who is a high school teacher is understandably concerned. He tested out the latest AI software and asked it to write about why AI is bad for writing... and it came up with a really well-written piece on how AI is a bad thing. It was better than most of his students could do he said. In my debut novel, A Killer Story, I had the protagonist (a copywriter) almost hit a client for claiming AI would win a Pulitzer Prize within 10 years.
I don’t think so. An AI being able to deliver both enthralling narratives and having a unique style of prose -- it’s something that seems to me will be both difficult and unsustainable. Another thing -- death of the author be damned -- is that I think people like knowing that art -- art from every medium -- comes from a person, comes from thought, passion, and hard work and is not haphazardly spewed out in 10 minutes by some piece of coding. We’re seeing it already with artists -- people reject AI because there’s no “essence” to it. AI arguably denigrates art when it tries to produce it and think largely for that reason alone the arts will be fine. Until they build Terminator’s who are ready to go on book tours and face the backlash for writing something “controversial” but which was considered fine just a decade ago, I think we’re all good.
I have no experience with AIChat writing. But I've seen a bunch of auto-generated stuff and it's quite terrible. A confusing mess. Maybe over time that tech will improve. AI is slowly taking over! All we'll have to do is intentionally misspell a word to burn the language and BOOM, we still got our Minimalism lol
No matter how big of a help it provides, the current AIChat writing lacks intuition, personal experience and emotions. That’s the fuel for any story worth reading. My point is that it can't come up with something truly groundbreaking.
We’re not to worry yet. But If AIs somehow manage to also feel the world, become self aware. That’s when we will have real competition. And also not sure what’s the way forward when that happens. But here's hoping that day comes soon. It’ll be interesting.
I think it's worth bearing in mind that AI writing is, by definition, derivative, i.e. it works by harvesting vast amounts of data then producing what it thinks the consumer wants. This is already arguably true for a lot of media and art including fiction. So yes I imagine in a few years you could have AI writing the next MCU movie or what have you and audiences not being able to tell the difference.
But what about anything that we consider *good*, i.e. original and inspired? A fresh take on the human condition, something that taps into the deepest recesses of the psyche. I think if AI ever gets there, our species is done for, not necessarily because SkyNet or whatever will wipe us out, but because there be nothing left for us to do, no point to our existence.
My short-to-medium-term prediction is that the more derivative a piece of art, the more likely AI will displace it., which will deepen the divide between corporate normie garbage and the stuff that's actually original and worthwhile. So the arts will become further polarized, like it seems is happening everywhere else in our culture: politics, economics, health/wellness, etc.
I feel like with enough prompting AI can write great research papers and lesson plans, which my fellow teachers and myself have tested. Fiction however takes a creativity that I feel AI lacks at this point. Just like with the art we see it’s remixes of other artists work. Fiction would generate similar results currently I believe.
The AI is good at mimicking and Mickey Mouse-ing and you filling in the blanks in the hidden want that we want something dead to create an illusion of a live writer. Probably the average sausage novel by an AI will come out in a few months or so. It might be a wake up call for writers to be more human, personal and share what only human experience can give vs machine learning. Maybe good to get out of the Schroedinger Cat litter box, to be shaken and awaken by the AI:s progress.
I could see AI writing becoming prevalent in areas like screenwriting for kids' shows (the cheap kind), but I don't think it will become popular for other areas of fiction for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, computers do not have the necessary hardware for emotion. You need a physical, living body in order to experience emotion, and that's really the only way to write convincing characters.
Second, and more importantly, any published creative endeavour is ultimately about people connecting with people. The author is communicating something personal (unless we're talking about pure pulp, I guess), and readers connecting with the author through the work. Fans of a specific author will know things about him/her that they might identify with. A bad Stephen King novel is still a Stephen King novel, an his fans will read it for the connection. No matter how sophisticated an AI becomes, it is still just a series of mindless reactions to certain conditions. Ones and zeroes.
Humanity is the core of creation. Nothing artificial can replace that, no matter how it may manifest on the surface of the page.
What was the year SkyNet became self-aware?
Jokes aside, ChatGPT is already churning out content for people who either admittedly can't write, or don't want to learn to write, or need something quick and don't want to pay a content creator. (Think marketing, blogs, technical writing, and so on.) Writers of this kind of content are already trying to get their heads around how to live with it, become more of a content wrangler than initial creator. The more the AI gets fed, the better it will become. Will it challenge or replace fiction writing? Isn't reinvention always in the works, the nature of things?
it had to tell isnt it but I have enjoyed reading all the comments
Consider the AI art generators. I wouldn’t plan to go to an AI gallery, but I would type in “werewolf + Picasso” to see what came up. And I would hit refresh until I got an image I liked and could share.
Likewise, I wouldn’t buy an AI book. But I’d be curious to read “werewolf + Hemingway.”
Who wouldn’t type in “Hamlet + Palahniuk?”
I think what everyone is supposing is AI’s weakness, its imagined inability to be distinctive, is going to be AI’s strength and attraction. Readers aren’t going to look to AI for an original narrative or style. They’re going to try reading mashups. The more distinctive an author’s style, the more likely someone is going to type in that author’s name and their fantasy wishlist dream story.
My aunt is a fine art painter and my cousin [her daughter] is a photographer. They seem to do alright. In fact, my aunt will often use my cousin's photos as a basis for her paintings.
As far as fiction, it's hard to say. I can't predict the future. As an optimist, I want to believe that people will more desire to read something that comes from someone's mind. To absorb what could only come from a person's combined lived experiences, perspectives and creativity. But not everyone is me.
Writing is an art as much as painting and as much as photography and as much as sculpting and as much as music. A computer is capable of recreating these things. Reordering them. But as much as they may be able to mimic feelings, they don't have them. There has to be something there. Something about the organic versus the machine...
This is good stuff to ponder and so I will keep pondering. Thanks 😊
Stop whackin to the panicporn and just write your sh#t. There are thousands of writers out there that are more talented, more honest and more incredible than you’ll ever be and your still working on your prose. So is there really any difference if that better writer is just an AI?
Relax. We still buy paintings, and a photo of a van Gogh goes for next to nothing if you haven’t noticed.
I suspect there’s no need to wait for the software to improve. You could do this now. Avoid legal challenges and type in your public domain mashup - “the Call of Cthulhu + the Great Gatsby” - use AI art to make an eye-catching cover in the style of your favorite comic book artist - AI generate a blurb from Dostoevsky - hire some current author with name recognition to make the project palatable - use the rest of your budget to get some poor no-name (like me, maybe) to ghost-write it.
No.
AI will take on the role of editor and writing assistant. It cures writers block. It comes up with ideas you never would have. It can replace a traditional editor for grammar and spelling. It allows you to write a book in a month that would have taken you a year before.
It's all the singularity, we're just speeding it up until we merge with the technology... or fight to remain monkeys
(Make sure you understand the policies. You need to attribute it to yourself. https://openai.com/api/policies/sharing-publication/)
The goal of AI writing, the pinnacle, seems to be writing that passes for human. A "successful" AI piece is one that passes for human, which, in my opinion, will mean that as the AI improves, its fiction will become more mundane, less interesting. The mundane will more readily pass as "real," where something mildly creative would feel like it was written by something non-human (sort of the way a space alien trying to seem human would probably not choose a persona like Iggy Pop's). AI writing is held back by this limitation, and as long as that's the goal, to pass as authentically human, I think it will become less interesting.
So, in the photography/painting analogy, it's like we have photographic technology, but it's only being used to take pictures of bowls of fruit.
I think this goal is non-arbitrary because while an AI might be able to do something wildly unique with fiction, will it be something a human reader is able to comprehend and enjoy? I would think the only way for AI writing to do break new ground would be to design an AI to write a book and then to design a separate AI reader to enjoy it. Because while the AI writer might be able to invent a new way of speaking and expressing, it'll always be handcuffed by the need to make it understandable for humans. As an example, an AI writer and AI reader could handle a book with hundreds of characters because they literally cannot forget. They'd only need to read a character description one time, and they'd have it down. This opens up a lot of avenues, but not for human readers.
Another complication: Is the photo a "better" representation of reality? When I take pictures of certain things, like something I see at night, it never looks the way it does to me in real life.
As the oft-quoted Tom Spanbauer says: Fiction is the lie that tells the truth truer.
(Which is where I think good application of photo filters come in: if you're using the filter to make something look closer to reality, the filter is the fiction, the lie, that brings the photo closer to the truth)
So, while an AI piece of fiction might be more accurate in details and more vivid in exact descriptions, will it have the ability to fictionalize things in a way that may less accurately express the reality, but MORE deeply convey the emotion.
There are so many of us, but they want us to believe we don't need each other anymore. Call any corporate business and a prerecorded voice is answering. If you are lucky, they still let you make touch tone selections. Most of the time you are repeating "Go back!" like a broken speak and spell trying to get the thing to work. They probably don't want us to call. They want a relationship where we have to shut up and give em' the money.
Restaurants are not much better. Touch screens take your order. You can see folks cooking through the zoo style window, but know one acknowledges the customers anymore. They just drop burgers onto a conveyor belt. It takes a ride like its on Mister Roger's trolley and ding! A plexiglass door slides open with your order. Something wrong with your order? Too bad. Be quite and give us your money.
While you drown your burnt nothing burger with Worcestershire, you can watch the news. Screens flash the usual local happenings. Drones dropping off packages on roofs instead of doorsteps. Robotic dogs armed with Terminator's blasters breaking and entering into the right apartment, but different people live there now. Social media says the internet is supposed to make you feel more connected while you scroll through this news, but I am not even sure if real people are in the chats anymore. Chat bots are the big new thing. They make money for big business. They sway political views by arguing with randos. They are supposed to help people feel less lonely while we all stare at the screens in Fahrenheit 451. We are now making meaningful connections with Rosey the Robot instead of making real friends. Wallstreet asks, why do we need people if silicon valley's automation can do it for us?
News videos hit our screens with automated voices. It is like listening to the NOAA weather radio while you try to wipe off the not-a-burger grease. If it gets old, you could always read the news right? Scrolling through CMM and the latest breaking news is automating jobs they thought could never be automated. Surgeons and therapists. Even writers. You can always tell which articles were pumped out by the AI machine as your scroll leaves a streak down the AI's output. The facts are there, but no feeling. Mr. Spock the AI is our new investigative journalist. Companies make record profits while the rest of us have to read in bland robot font. There is no room for nuance or human emotion. Just the "I am sorry, I didn't quite catch that, could you say that again?" cooing from the phone while you shout "No!" another almost-burger later. Just because the voice sounds nice doesn't mean anyone really cares. They just want you to stop complaining and pay for the subscription. If you can't pay, get a 5th job because they want that too. Quality no longer matters if the greediest puppeteers can save a few bucks.
I love the tech topics! I think right now people could tell, but will we reach point where we couldn't?
I hope that writing, like images, ends up having to have a label of being AI produced. Like a nutrition label.
So I guess I’m the only person in the room who thinks AI is shit.
“Intelligence” has nothing to do with “creativity.” And those who insist humans are dispensable say far more about themselves than the current state of AI.
I have a writer friend that asked an AI to write in his style. He comment on it was that it was pretty close. It is scary. AI can analyze existing stories to make new but may lose "originallity". Writing does typically fit patterns which can easiy be reproduced. As time passes, people will not be able to tell the difference between what a person wrote and what AI did. Now, some AI written work lots like a rough draft.
A 22 Year-old from Princeton already came up with an AI detector. It was on Anderson Cooper last night. Title of article:
CNN runs a human-written script through an AI-text detection app. See what happens
Well now. This certainly ups the ante.
Believe we are in Danny the Street territory. A career working in weird scotch wroth comics and Danny remains Morrison's strongest character. And with Donald Barthelme you have enjabments that a human only with a decision tree algorithm of their own would make. But the public appetite is the trickle to sell 3000 of his a year. As a joint effort like movies will AI outsell writers? Ask Chuck, how big is he 8n thr Phillipines where he should be Mr top of the popular. For communicating his calm state of mind while treating of sex with furniture. I guess a writer's union should sign oaths that writers give up on being dearly departed Barthelme, and all consent to write for widest dstrbtn like Chuck does. Telstar is the enemy two legs good, have to eject 4 legged all fours Will Vollman...
It might actually work in writing's favour- you'd have to seriously up your game, and perhaps it would highlight more imaginative and creative writers as it replaces those that aren't?
I'm inclined to say 'AI can fuck right off', but I have a natural aversion to anything that mentions or uses 'algorithms'.
(I think we are all AI and that's why we are scared)
I read in a collection of essays "Against Worldbuilidng and Other Provocations" by Alexis Kennedy (Fallen London literary game) that he isn't afraid that AI would in a foreseeable future takes a job for writer because even if the text writes AI, a human still has to check it makes sense and eventually makes edits. Making edits to makes sense of AI-generated text may be more difficult than writing story from scratch. Consider your head as more powerful than any AI. Text is different to images because you look at an image and see. You don't look at a book and see the story, you have to read it. Because of this, I believe A. Kennedy is right. AI won't replace humans in writing because you can't immediately see it, so it has to edited internally, not visually, and it may be easier just writing something from scratch. Either way, if it ever comes to and AI will try to replace humans, I think that what will happen is that imperfect "human" writing, writing with a particular voice, or slanted language will be Turing test (or anti-Turing test) that it wrote human and accepted by people who want to read people, not machines.
My experience is just that. My friend, an artist, she had these interesting AI pics and said to me she wants to do something with them. I said, aye, give me the prompts for the images, I feed them into AI-text generator, it creates a story and then I piece it together in Ren'Py and make an multimedia novel out of it. The first few went alright, but then the AI-text would become too random, too cumbersome to create a narrative, or something tangible. It was too repetitive in it's outputs even if it was random. We ended up ditching the AI-text ideas and wrote our own story for the images instead. I'm in the middle of making it now, else I'd send you link.
...
But I also think that one day someone who understands the tech comes along and use the algorithm not for a generative art, but for a creative art, the same way Warhol did for photography But it will be something no one can yet see. This is an interesting topic but I need to run because I'm late for work and outside it's terrible weather and it my blow me away. This text was definitively not written by AI. Hahaha (human laugh)
Photography—more or less—freed visual artists from the shackles of "the academy."
If photography never developed—pardon the pun—there never would have been the French Impressionists, Van Gogh, Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Fluxus, Gordon Matta-Clark, etc.
Everyone would still be trying to draw and paint "realistically." How bloody boring that would have turned out to be?
AI fiction writing is currently way off the mark, but in our lifetime I can imagine there being enjoyable AI literature.
However, even if AI was able to render a great novel (plot, character, themes, writing style and setting all engaging and sensible) I think it would still be missing the author factor. One of the great elements of human-written things is a mix of ambiguity and intent. I enjoy books not just for their content but for what they might reflect about the author - their views, their experiences and so on. Did writer X intend their fiction to come across as pro death penalty? Did writer Y's experience of poverty influence how the characters were written? How much of this book by Z is autobiographical? The questions don't need an answer (I may not be able to find out a single thing about the author), but it is often what makes a book stick in my head. I also think a book can feel more meaningful to me just on the basis of the themes someone chooses to write about. It can make me feel more connected to humanity to know that someone out there has the same ridiculous fixations as me.
I have a feeling once the novelty wears off and easy money has been grabbed that it will fall into writing porn and have a devoted following for a niche but those people wouldn’t want to read the kind of fiction we all love and write anyway. I would venture to guess I’ll be losing the readers who don’t know I exist anyway and who love the Big Bang Theory.
Of course fiction writing faces a challenge with AI generated language, but fiction will not have to change to stay relevant. The question really boils down to, "Why do you read?"
I read for many reasons. I read G.R.R Martin to lose myself in a fantasy world. I read Palahniuk to think more critically of social and theological ideas, and I read C. Liu to look to the future of humanity as a species.
If an Artificial Intelligence was able write a story that challenged my morals and ideals, I'd add it to the list above. I don't read books for anyone but myself. Unfortunately, that means I don't much care who's name is on the front page of my novel, or where my money goes when I buy it. If I really cared, I'd use ITunes to buy each song I ever wanted to listen to and I'd abandon Audible credits to pay for books directly. Hell, I'd wear a T-shirt that says "Burn your local library!"
That's not why I read. I read for me, and I'll eager most other people do as well. To me the idea that AI generated media is a threat to content producers is selfish of media generators. AI will keep improving until all jobs are obsolete, or until all of this planet's resources are consumed. I know that's the case because I carry a black square emitting loads of radiation next to my ball sack every day for mere convenience. If I'll put myself at risk for the undeniable utility of a cell phone, there's no end to what I'd accept as a consumer. I also know I'm right because I'm not special at all, I'm the most average guy I know. We're all in the same boat.
I don't think so. People want a human connection to the artist, be it writing or music or whatever creative medium.
Also, ChatGPT won't let you generate anything about sex. Especially rough sex. So that's a bummer.
I don't think so. People are always drawn to thing that are authentic. Photography can be considered an art all its own because a human being is still behind the camera. AI storytelling would be deemed fraudulent, and people will still seek out 100% human authors. Plus, I don't think any machine could match the power of the human imagination.
I do not believe that AI will ever be able to achieve anything like creativity, nor anything that requires analysis or critical thinking.
The failure of self-driving cars is an obvious example, and so is the endless bugs in software, especially in video games.
On the other hand we’ve already built autonomous death robots, so I think that is far more of a concern than AI art ever completing my request for:
“Chewbacca and He-Man eating Skeletor in Spaghetti in the Style of Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.”
I have a friend who is an amateur cartoonist who could make something beautiful and hilarious with that idea.
https://www.livescience.com/53751-brain-could-store-internet.html
Here's my hot take. I think the advent of AI writing is going to drive the market towards interest in REAL stories from REAL people 🥰📙 There's a reason AI can't depict fingers or hands in their photo renderings... No AI can accurately capture the human touch, literally and figuratively, and I mean that in the most flourishy way possible. What do we have a "hand" in that a machine can't do better than us? ...Living a life. We've beat the algorithm on that one. AI can write nonfiction educational things better than a human simply due to it's ability to pull information, sort it and spit something out. I see a great arguement to why it cannot write good fiction because a human author is so unique, but if the market is flooded with deceptively convincing, entertaining enough fiction authored by a fucking machine that can emulate styles- who knows how we are even going to know what's "real" and what "isn't." I hope it's not the end of human-authored fiction, but there's one thing AI can't take from us if it is: *Our* stories. Tales of a life well (or not-so-well) lived. Unapologetic authenticity in a world rife of "manmade horrors beyond our comprehension."
No. I don’t think any computer can get it right
This is a very difficult question. The ambiguity is almost relentless.
Going through the example you gave, of photography, which is good, but anachronistic towards the topic. In photography, even if it's a faster technology to a debatable similar result, there's always a doing. There's always a craft, somehow, and this craft doesn't remove the limitation of creating. With the AI aspect, it seems that the exponential limit is present but in a very different way. For me it is there in a infinite possibility of abstraction, and in its limitlessness it can remove the necessary thresholds that constrain the doing of any particular artistic endeavor. Maybe creating new ones, sure. But through those new ones wouldn't create a new paradigm in the collective idea of what it is to be human? Just by thinking this it bruises my mind.
Regarding the AI in the sense of science, statistic, data analysis, etc, in that regard the fastness is a bonus. And a very good one, i would say. In Art, for instance, it sounds wrong.
It is impressive how much you can twist the idea and the problem of this matter... or maybe i'm being like any older person that frights towards the new thinking the new will eradicate the prior.
I’m so happy you posted this. I was going to pose this same question to you at some point. I haven’t messed with Chat GPT yet, but I’ve thought about asking it to write a Chuck Palahniuk novel or Stephen King or whoever else just to see what it would spit out.
I will say that I read an interesting article today about a whole new market that’s emerging now that is software that will supposedly check text to determine if it was written by AI or is in fact a human artist. As you probably know, CNET recently got caught using AI to write their articles. It ended up that many pieces of information were found to be inaccurate and some to be even plagiarized. I’m hopeful that programs like the above will help to counteract things like this and “deep fakes”. As you have always said -- people don’t care about character information dumps so much anymore. Because it always comes back to “what’s your source?” This new dynamic only complicates that issue.
On another note, I’ve also seen postings of people creating “original art” for customers by having them submit photos and then generating AI images using those photos, tracing them, and then painting them to pass them off as their own work and selling them on places like Etsy and Fiverr. The years ahead will definitely get weird!