Writing with Artificial Intelligence
I’ve been experimenting lately and I’m excited to share.
As many of you might know, I work with companies to implement automation and do a lot of work with Artificial Intelligence. My push, and the push of my company Mind Over Machines, is that technologies like Artificial Intelligence amplify human capability.
As a writer, and techie, I like exploring new technologies for storytelling. Here I’m exploring using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to generate text for a story. Here’s what happened. If you’re curious about AI and writing, this should give you some tips and tricks to consider. If there’s a place you’d like to explore further, let me know in the comments below.
Where to start?
You can build an NLP system yourself or you can use one someone else already built. I am using a tool someone else built because it is easier to setup and I’d rather be writing than training machine learning models.
Once the tool is selected or setup, you need to provide a writing prompt. This is just like if you were working with a ghostwriter. I used the following prompt to plant the seed of an idea for the AI system:
“A mouse wanders into the house of a troll. The troll asks the mouse why it came and the mouse says ‘To eat you.’ The troll laughs while the mouse prepares the oven. The mouse cooks the troll in boiling water with stones and carrots. ”
Notice a few things here, this is not a whole plot but more like instructions on the idea to write about. Next, I had to define a tone of voice for the AI to write in. I thought this would be a good children’s story so I set the tone to be “playful”.
Now, I was ready to generate content. Let’s see what came out.
Photo by Alex Knight from Pexels
AI’s version of the story
A mouse wanders into the house of a troll.
"Why did you come?" the troll asks, and the mouse replies,
"To eat you."
The troll laughs while the little creature prepares the troll's oven. 'And what,' he says, 'do you cook in my oven?'
'Stone and carrots,' said the mouse with a smirk on its face and an innocent look in its eyes. 'And, as I said, you.'
This all seems rather endearing to the troll, whose mood greatly improves after cracking a few jokes. The mouse's cleverness makes him laugh. It is only when the mouse sets the oven and places himself inside it that the troll stops laughing and asks: 'So, what are you trying to do?'
'To eat you,' the mouse cheerfully replies. 'And now I'm doing it.'
The troll rattles the house with laughter and points to the mouse. 'You little rascal! You think you're ever going to eat me? Just take a look at yourself!' The troll laughs even harder and now stumbles towards the mouse, towards the oven. 'I'm going to have you for dinner!' As the troll swipes to grab up the mouse.
The mouse jumps out of the way and between the troll's feet. The troll trips and falls face-first into the oven. As he roasts, the mouse mocks him: 'Now I'm going to eat you!'
The mouse smiles and chomps down on roasted troll. A delicious meal, to be sure.
Note: There were a few updates
The way these AI tools work is that you need to tweak the content to keep it focused. So, there were a few places here that I had to redirect the AI system to keep making sense. Because I often write about The Metaverse, the AI system wanted to talk about Metaverse and so redirection was needed.
Time to generate this story
All in, this story took about 7 minutes to produce from idea to version shown here.
Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels
Workflow
From a workflow perspective, what the AI produced is the concept and seed of the story. Just like a ghostwriter, now I go through and update, tweak, modify to make it my own. Here are my steps:
Come up with a prompt idea
Generate the content and tweak along the way
Re-write the story in my own voice
An example on #3, I’m big on sensory details. Notice, the AI is not. So, when I re-write it I’ll add the sensory details that I want.
Do I need to worry about plagiarism?
How the system works is based on patterns and predictions. The AI system looks for patterns in the content that was written before it writes the next sentence and guesses at what words come next. That guess is based on statistical analysis and a very large data set (9 billion websites and millions of other written content). It is possible that the appearance of plagiarism can unintentionally occur but the AI system (this one anyway) does not “copy & paste” content.
As with any ghostwriter scenario, you should (I say need to) check for plagiarism on the produced work. You can do that through many great services online. If you’d like to know which ones I trust just reach out.
The Future
I will definitely be using AI to help me write in the future. For nonfiction it helps me source data faster (but it doesn’t fact check, that’s still a human need). For fiction, it helps me break down writers block. It is another brain in my creative process no different than an editor or ghostwriter. With that said, AI isn’t human and will never replace a human’s ability to connect with other humans.
Connecting with humans is a uniquely human thing. While AI can help us write stories, collect the dots of a story, only a human can connect those dots to truely connect with another human (this is my belief). And nothing connects us like a good story. Isn’t that the power of stories? Connecting us?
Side note, AI helped me write this post :)
Photo by André Beltrame from Pexels
Roasted Troll
A mouse wanders into the house of a troll. The house is messy and stinks of normal troll stink. The mouse sniffs the air, goes back outside and grabs a paw full of thyme from the troll’s garden.
“What are you doing?” the troll asks.
The mouse scurries to the oven and climbs up. Dragging a large pot from the sink, the troll hadn’t done dishes in a long time, the mouse places carrots, stones and the thyme from the garden into the pot.
“Oh, I’m here to eat you.” the mouse says as it fills the pot with water and scrubs the gristle or goo or whatever was on the pot off.
The troll watches the mouse work for a moment then busts into laughter. Pointing to the mouse the troll asks: “No seriously, what are you doing here?”
With the pot clean to the mouse’s satisfaction, the mouse places the pot in the oven. Stones are tossed in first, Then some carrots. “Hold this please.” the mouse hands the troll the thyme.
The troll accepts it bewildered and still laughing. “What are you doing with my oven?”
“I’m going to cook some stones, some carrots,” said the mouse with a smirk on its face and a sly snicker. “and, as I said…you.” Sniffing the air again the mouse shakes its head. “Based on your stink, you’ll need that to taste decent.” The mouse nods to the thyme.
The mouse sets the oven.
The troll laughs so hard, he throws his head back and stumbles backwards. His eyes water and his belly aches from the house rattling laughter. 'You little rascal! You think you're ever going to eat me? Just take a look at yourself!' Laughing really hard, the troll walks slowly towards the mouse, towards the oven. 'Instead of you eating me, I’m going to have you for dinner!' The troll swipes to grab up the mouse.
The mouse jumps out of the way and between the troll's feet. The troll trips and falls face-first into the oven. As he roasts, the mouse mocks him: 'Now I'm going to eat you! Make sure to rub that thyme on yourself. I don’t want to miss that flavor.’ The oven door slams shut.
About 3 hours later, the troll is done and the oven opens. The house smells of thyme and roasted troll stink. Pulling the pot out of the oven, the mouse belly’s up to the table and sniffs deep.
‘Well,’ the mouse says, ‘at least they taste better than they smell.’ He chomps into the roasted troll and smiles. A smelly but delicious meal, to be sure.
<end>
Special thanks:
Cover Photo by Terje Sollie from Pexels