Tag Archives: generative ai

The Futile Attempt to Ban AI Writing

If you want to submit a short story or novel to any publisher today, you will inevitably find a disclaimer on their submission guidelines page that forbids submitting a story that used AI. But what exactly does “using AI” entail? If you dictate a story with an app that uses AI to transcribe it, is that using AI? If you then use Grammarly to proofread and edit, is that using AI? If you upload your manuscript to use Perplexity as a fact-checker and research assistant, is that using AI? If you use ChatGPT to help generate ideas during the outline phase but then write the actual story yourself, is that using AI? If you generate the first draft of a story with an LLM, but then rewrite every single word, is that still considered using AI? What if you only change 95% of the words? 75%? 50%?

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When AI Creates “Perfect” Art for You

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In the future, it may be possible for AI to create art (including books, movies, music, and videogames) that is so perfectly attuned to an individual’s preferences, perhaps even directly using brain scans to determine the precise ingredients that will give the person the ultimate entertainment experience (like from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest), whatever that may be for the particular individual. This AI would essentially create better art than humans—not that it would be objectively better than anything created by humans, but it would be subjectively better to that one particular human for whom the artwork is specifically created for. And AI could conceivably do this for every single human in the world: create unique works of art tailored to be the best work of art for that individual (whatever the criteria for “best” is for them). How could human artists compete with that?

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AI Songs: The History and Future of Music

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First there was AI images, then there was AI text. It was only a matter of time until AI music came along—and with Suno, it is here. The AI music generator (and others such as Udio) has become my latest obsession. It is simple to use with surprisingly good results. Just enter a text prompt with a subject matter and/or musical genre, and it will quickly produce a 2-minute song of professional quality. Of course the results vary—some songs are better than others. But in a short amount of time I have already created a few gems, such as this 1980s-style electronic anthem for “Time Zone Weird” that I can’t get out of my head:

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Think Like an Artist to Create Better AI Art

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One of the great upsides of AI art is the ability for artistically unskilled people to create their own artwork. Instead of spending years learning the craft of how to paint or draw, you can instantly generate a skilled painting or drawing. The most artistic part of the process in AI art becomes choosing which image to create. For that image to be artistically meaningful, prompters must learn how to think like an artist.

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Algorithmic Fiction is Not For Me

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Welcome to the age of algorithmic fiction. Thanks to tools like GPT-4, a human writer with a library of previously written books can simply write a one-page outline for a new novel, and AI can write an entire novel in their style. In many cases the book will be good enough to pass as if it was written by the human authors themselves, allowing writers to publish more frequently. However, GPT fiction will only work with formulaic writers whose books are all similar. In other words, those writers who were already writing algorithmic fiction before the aid of AI.

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Sunk Cost Writing: Use AI to Kill Your Darlings

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One of the most difficult parts of writing is “killing your darlings.” That might mean cutting out a part you liked to make the story as a whole better. Or, more generally, it can simply mean deleting the boring parts of your story. (As Elmore Leonard said, there should be no boring parts.) Perhaps one of the greatest upsides of writing with AI is that it can help eliminate the “sunk cost fallacy” that authors often face with the words they have already written.

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The Artistic Singularity: Generative AI and the Future of Movies

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One of my works in progress is a science fiction novella about the creation of an artificial general intelligence (AGI). The story features a scene where the human programmers are amazed that the AGI can create original artwork of any kind on demand. I wrote the first draft in 2018. Yes, just four years ago an AI that could create art seemed like a speculative bit of futurism. Now it appears I will need to revise that scene, as what was “sci-fi” then is now just “sci.” Reality is progressing faster than I can publish science fiction.

When I wrote this post about DALL-E last May, I had only seen others’ generative-AI creations; I hadn’t gotten the chance to create my own AI art yet. Now I have and am utterly addicted. There was much hype around AI image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney when they were first released. Usually when something is hyped that much in the media it is overblown; the reality is far less dramatic. But after DALL-E became public, plus the release of the free and open-source Stable Diffusion, I have had the chance to create my own AI art (thousands of images at this point—and counting). While the initial hype was quite high, I would venture to say it was not nearly high enough. Most people still don’t realize how significant generative AI is/will be. In the future, people will look back at the world pre-AI art as a distinct, unrecognizable time. Generative AI is a total game-changer, an artistic singularity.

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