ChatGPT - What's all the hype?

Has anyone explored ChatGPT?

With all the hype, my curiosity peaked, so I asked it to "tell me a story about talking walls." This is what it said back to me.

*******unedited ChatGPT generated story********

Once upon a time there was a village on the edge of a dark and mysterious forest. It was a quiet, small village, but its inhabitants always felt safe and secure.

One day, there was a terrible thunderstorm and the villagers heard loud voices coming from the walls of their houses. As the storm raged on, the voices became louder and louder. Terrified, the villagers ran to the centre of the village and huddled together.

The village chief walked out into the storm and challenged the walls. He shouted “Who are you?”

Immediately, the wall responded “We are the voice of the walls. We can talk and we can tell you the stories of our people.”

The village chief was astounded. He asked the walls to tell him their stories and the walls began to tell tales that no one had ever heard before.

The villagers listened with wonder as the walls weaved stories of great battles, of love and loss, of adventures in the kingdom and of the origins of their people.

The villagers were so captivated that they continued to listen to the walls for hours. Slowly, the storm began to die down and the villagers gathered what they could of the stories before the walls fell silent.

And that was the story of how people of the village began to learn about the walls of their homes, and the secrets that the walls held.

*******unedited ChatGPT generated story *********

Would you have known the above story was written by AI? I don't know I that would have guessed that it was.

I hate to say it but that ChatGPT story is well written - simplistic perhaps, but well written never-the-less as far as sentence structure and comprehensive plot goes. How on earth would any filtering site ever be able to decide with finality that something was generated in whole or even in part by an AI program? I can't help but feel that we are now entering an age where the creditbility of the written word will be circumspect even more so than before. Unfortunately, not only will we have to use scrutiny to determine the veracity of what a writer has put forth for us to read -- we will now have to wonder if a writer even wrote it. Or was it written by a "prompt engineer." Yes! I actually read a story regarding AI generated art where a person touted herself as a "prompt engineer" to validate her investment in the art product generated by AI. That without her complex prompting, the AI could generate nothing because it does not truly think on its own. AI merely reacts to input it is given and then using an algorithm behind the scenes, it manifest something for you. So, if we shift this direction with creative writing, what is a writer's tagline then? We wouldn't be authors because we didn't truly write it. Prompt Engineer hardly sounds fitting. I would have thought that the AI art creator would merely have been fitting called AI Artist and then let the results speak for itself as to how great a prompt writer the creator was. But perhaps "artist" is unfair since no art skills were used by the promptor. But then, if they had an understanding of art, they could have used prompts that guided the AI to generate something more genuinely artistic than just a smash up from a list of items to include. I would say it's.... complicated.

Back to what to call writers that begin to lean on AI to generate creative written works. 'Creator' is the term used here on Vocal to describe its contributors. Would 'AI Creator' be an appropriate term then? Or 'AI Creationist' perhaps? Clearly AI is capable of generating stories that make sense as demonstrated above. However, my prompt for that story was so simple it can't be said I used any skills or even effort. I merely asked it "write a story about talking walls." That was it. And the outcome is what I shared above. So, where does ChatGPT get its muse for what it generates? Did it look in my phone to see all the stories that I've written and saved in my notes and then patterned after my writting style? The tone of the story could mirror mine somewhat. It's a much more simplistic story than I would have written. It does perhaps provide some good bones to springboard from. But if a person used that and then modified it and grew it into something much larger and mostly original using the above as an idea seed, should one still declare that AI was involved? This AI content generating poses lots of gray area because we all know there are people out there that will just grab what ChatGPT generates and throw it out there with their name on it as is. There will be some that tweak it a bit if only to make it match a designated word count or a required opening phrase. Some will use it merely as an idea, much like looking at photos or art to get ideas, and then morph it well beyond what AI provided. And of course, there will be the purists that pen their works from start to finish without any aid at all except perhaps something like Grammarly. But then.... isn't Grammarly a form of AI? This worm hole gets ever larger.

So how could ChatGPT be used?

It occurred to me as I sat looking at my one and only adventure with ChatGPT that were I middle school child or perhaps even a teen, that ChatGPT could be used to replace the Invisible Friend. The plus is that it would actually have some intelligence if we give credibility to the concept of AI being intelligent. Could AI provide genuine guidance to an angst riddled teen? Could a troubled person tell ChatGPT their deepest troubles without risk of betrayal and be able to get truly beneficial responses in return? AI wouldn't pass judgment. At least surely it wouldn't.... And it wouldn't betray a person't confidences. That is unless there is something in the tiny type saying it lifts all our interactions for purposes of research...

One thing is certain... AI is here to stay. How it we choose to use it and how its use will ultimately evolve remains to be seen.