Whether or not you realise it, there is a battle going on for the creative hearts and minds of our world. The enemy is everywhere, invisibly leaking into our unconscious psyche. Sure sometimes you can spot it, a non contiguous limbs with too many joints, a fucked up hand where the fingers blur into one, a face that is way too symmetrical until it isn’t. But by carefully pruning these defects the visible results get more and more uncanny.
The efforts of our greatest creative minds are being tipped into a huge digital mincing machine and ground down into sloppy joes, which are then somehow re-crystalized into not just prime wagu beef but whole living cows, making genuine farming unsustainable as a career and banishing agrarian culture to the past.
Sorry this metaphor got away from me somewhat.
I am of course speaking about Dall-E Stable Diffusion, and the whole AI art phenomenon. I can’t draw, so I’m going to leave that whole discussion to people who can, and are having their work and livelihoods stolen outright by this process. I do however like to write, and AI has been after my turf as well, in the form of the General Text Prediction algorithm, the latest incarnation of which is ChatGPT.
And readers I’m sad to say I used it… And I liked it.
Before I get into what I used it for, and how magicians may apply what I learnt, let me give a brief intro.
ChatGPT though intended as a chat bot able to take a prompt such as “pretend you are Boudica and make bedroom talk with me” has sort of captured the world’s attention because its eagerness to answer any question along with having hoovered up pretty much all the text on the internet as a training model mean you can say “Write me a paper comparing the nutritional value of bananas to grapes” and give an enterprising student an A+ in home economics class.
Understandably writers are worried. Not authors, I should add, the task of inventing a whole internally consistent universe and crafting intricately layered plots with compelling characters is beyond even the most powerful of AIs¹. The vast majority of writers spend their time writing advertorials about virtually identical pieces of consumer technology or whimsical product instructions on the back of instant meals. While the final output of an AI in such arenas probably still needs human eyes on it to make sure it hasn’t fabricated non existent specifications or asked for nonsensical actions, a whole writing staff could be reduced down to a computer and a couple of editors.
This is an interesting quirk in how AI is used, no big publishing house or art driven studio would use AI in their creative process as AI generated work cannot be copyrighted² and is therefore difficult to generate a meaningful revenue stream from. The difference however is that while small scale art and writing jobs are both going to suffer from AI, none of the great novelists of our time started out writing pot noodle directions and ad-copy for the free papers.
Artists on the other hand often climb their way up to being the creative lead on hit TV shows by taking small scale commission work and producing a portfolio which acts as a CV for larger projects. The commissions also keep an artist fed and watered giving them more time to hone their craft. Take that away and there simply won’t be a next generation of artists for the big projects AI wouldn’t be trusted with³.
So when I want a picture to illustrate a trick in some way, or music to fit a routine, I commission an actual artist or musician, but recently I had an interesting idea.
I’m writing a routine about the tooth fairy, it has a sort of witchy surreal vibe to it and I wanted to show a picture of a toothfairy as a kind of feral creature, wearing jewellery made from teeth to sell the core premise.
But rather than just show the picture in a frame or something I wanted it to be in a paranormal investigator’s battered journal, like a field sketch. Only problem is I need to fill the rest of the journal with vaguely paranormal sounding junk.
I’m in the process of developing a number of routines which relate to similar things and I’d like to write a book to use during an act combining them all; an almanac of supernatural faux-nomenon containing every premise used in the act described as if it were real.
However, that is a long large project and I have an upcoming competition to enter this particular routine in, so it doesn’t really matter what the rest of the book says… So why not give AI a whirl?
In this form it is basically a thematically consistent lorem ipsum generator and honestly I think this is the best application for it. I fed it such prompts as:
“Write a series of diary entries from a man who has noticed a stain on his ceiling in the shape of a human figure which seems to be closer to his bed every night.”
And
“Write an autopsy report for a new cryptid, a mushroom that walks around on legs when no one is looking”
And since I know you’re going to want to see what this looks like, here’s the output for the prompt “write several diary entries of a man trying to build a box to trap a ghost in his house, with several setbacks along the way”
Day 1
Today marks the beginning of my attempt to trap the ghost that has been haunting my home for the past several weeks. I have spent the morning researching various methods for ghost trapping and have settled on building a box lined with silver, as it is said to repel spirits.
I spent the afternoon measuring and cutting the pieces of the box, but struggled to get the angles right. I also discovered that I am missing some critical tools, which slowed my progress considerably.
After a trip to the hardware store, I resumed construction of the ghost trap. I managed to assemble the box but found that the seams were not quite tight enough, and there were gaps between the panels that would allow the ghost to escape.
To remedy this, I decided to line the inside of the box with sticky tape, hoping that it would trap the ghost if it came into contact with it. However, I quickly realized that the tape was not strong enough to hold the ghost for any length of time.
Day 2
Undeterred, I spent today researching new methods for ghost trapping. I came across an old book that suggested using salt to trap spirits, as it is said to weaken their energy fields.
I spent the day spreading salt around the perimeter of the room where the ghost has been most active, hoping to create a barrier that would keep it contained. However, when I returned to the room later that evening, I found that the ghost had simply moved to another area of the house.
Day 3
My latest attempt at trapping the ghost involved creating a sort of cage out of copper wire. I thought that the metal would disrupt the ghost’s energy field and render it unable to move.
I spent hours constructing the cage, only to find that it was too flimsy and could not support its own weight. I also noticed that the ghost seemed to be growing stronger, which is concerning.
Day 4
Today, I finally had a breakthrough in my ghost trapping efforts. I decided to combine several of the methods I had tried previously, using a silver-lined box filled with salt and surrounded by copper wire.
To my delight, the ghost seemed to be drawn to the box, and I was able to lure it inside using a trail of salt. Once it was inside, I quickly closed the lid and sealed the box with copper wire. The ghost seemed to struggle at first, but eventually became still.
I am cautiously optimistic that I have finally found a way to rid my home of this troublesome spirit.
¹ For now. I’ll start worrying when the world’s best AI can match the quality of the worlds worst human written fiction – Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone.
² For now. Already people are talking about the minimum amount of work needed to convert a public domain idea into a copyrighted one. Would a single brushstroke be enough? Tracing over it and erasing the original? The works of A.A. Milne recently popped into public domain, but whatever you do don’t draw the bear in a red t-shirt because Disney will come a knocking. That shirt is the difference between A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and Walt Disneys Winnie the Pooh.
³ Except of course for the major outlier in all creative industries, the independently wealthy who use their social connections and vast inherited fortunes to skip the whole starving, suffering and struggling for recognition phase of an artist’s life cycle. But I feel like if those people were in charge of all the entertainment industry’s creative work the final product wouldn’t be particularly relatable.