A Novel Written by ChatGPT
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As an art person, the cover stands out immediately--it seems a very likely case study in how AI can make expression and visual storytelling seem like lost arts, further separating the elements of design from the principles of design.
But I can only guess that the art is created by AI, since there's no cover credit, no mention of it in the writeup that I can see, etc. Presumably if a human made it, the author would see fit to credit them.
(And--if a human illustrated this, I'm sorry, but her left-side digits forced my hand! A known AI art problem that lingers even given recent improvements...)
The writing does seem to be a masters-level course in telling rather than showing. Which is a no-no. I do wonder if this kind of specific directive--show, don't tell--could be integrated though, and to what degree.
The writing also lacks suitable expressiveness for this genre or even any-genre writing, and I would love to see deltas vs. a really experienced and authenticity-focused author-editor with a strong feel for characterization. Teasing apart the characters being another area with obvious improvements to "cover."
If someone offered a class called "I am a professional writer and will show you how I took an AI story framework to professional completion", I would sign up ASAP. Knowing, and celebrating, that it's going to be an exercise in subjectivity! Well-honed subjectivity is definitely the new objectivity as far as AI goes. (Or something like that)
So, I agree with the author that there are some big creativity issues but particularly within the realm of expressiveness. There are so many forms of expressiveness under-utilized here that I could even see myself preferring e.g. a dictionary to this particular novel.
But as a tool, fantastic as expected.
BTW I loved that it added a riddle, umprompted--that was fun to see.
That's a failure on the part of the [author?]. When you literally ask GPT to tell you a story, it's going to tell you a story. The "author's" entire process is mechanical iteration-- "Make a statement. Enhance. Enhance. Enhance."
It's more "showy" when you start with "write a script about..." and massage that into a story, or add stipulations like "...go into emotional detail."
People are gaming this thing to write smut, so if the output is this bland, it's not the tech that's the problem.
To me those are completely different types of expression.
I mean I could yawn and call it expression but qualitatively that's different...
Anyway I'm not above reading AI smut if it'll clue me in. Link it if you have it.
- Make me a script based on this idea.
- Now turn it into a comic book.
- Now turn the comic book into an animated movie.
- Now turn the animated movie into a photo realistic movie with actors who look like x, y, z but not enough to get us sued.
All of that will be probably be doable in less than a week, maybe even a day if you were a movie studio who could afford a redonkulous computer to run it all on.
We might even end up with the first AI movie stars. Absolutely wild times.
We're still far from this today however this will happen... Can't wait