[Two months after the first part]

I came in to this project totally blown away by the capabilities of the AI image generator, Midjourney v4 and was excited about how that tool could help with the illustration of my stories here on Wattpad. The fact that ChatGPT-3.5 at the time could string a few sensical paragraphs together was, I considered, text generation no more than a novelty; that it would be impossible for a machine to produce art with the spirit of a practiced writer. Then, GPT-4 came along and I soon realised it is a better writer than me.

While this might not be saying much, let's try something out. To summarise the prompt [1] I've asked GPT-4 to write an opening scene for a John Wick fan fiction. The generated text is presented below as an image (the text version is included at [4] at the end of this part):

So you might appreciate, I'm pretty hesitant to go down the path of assuming that nothing of any worth could come from a machine "just following probabilistic rules with no intuition" (as I saw GPT-4 described recently[2]). I think such hubris would be a mistake, especially considering how fresh this whole thing is and how the capability can improve so quickly. 

I've also seen publishers worried about AI. Take the case of issue 200 of Clarkesworld Magazine, a top tier SciFi and Fantasy destination. The Magazine recently tweeted about their cover art that was found to be AI generated. The generated art was quickly replaced by the work of a human artist, but not before a temporary holding page was set [3]:

To be honest, it was a little disappointing to see a well respected magazine that is in the business of promoting visions of the future taking such a strong, seemingly reactionary, stance. Like it or not, AI is here to stay. We are in one of those rare moments in history where science overtakes contemporary science fiction.

That said, it must be a challenging time for publications and their editors especially when they are being spammed by AI generated stories. Again, to use Clarkesworld as an industry representative, they offer a dark prediction for new writers. When asked "how much this [AI spam] is hurting real writers?". Clarkesworld responds, "...New writers are the most likely to feel the impact through lost opportunities."

I wonder if this is the end of traditional publishing. It is easy to think this when I hold the last volume of 'Black Static' in my hand issues 82/82. This TTA Press publication ran from 1993. It is sad, because storytelling is just lots of words if there is no one to tell the story to.  

***

Even if there are no traditional publications to write for. Writers will keep writing. We will need an adjustment period as the genres shift, as society shifts and as this AI technology matures. 

What do I mean by genre shift? 

As a SF writer who has written sentient machines in his work for almost ten years, perhaps I should be worried because, due to the aforementioned crossover between history and fiction, a lot of what I've written will be out-dated and I will need consider if it will be worth revisiting this work to somehow 'unbreak' it. For my AI inspired 'cyber' become more speculative in a 'post-cyber' universe--a world where humanity somehow managed to eradicate artificial sentience from the Galaxy, so I have a partial get out of jail free card because this scenario is yet, unrealised. 

In these writes I'd would like to examine AI as a tool. Let's explore this new discovery of the vulcan mind,  an auxiliary  faculty of pure logic based on probabilities and with zero emotion.  It will be fun to find out what AI tools we can use and how they are changing. Can AI make us better writers ? Can we use it and still do right by our readers and our fellow human creatives? 

As there are more questions than answers, we'll start off easy with the first parts covering generating images to illustrate our stories.

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Refs:

[1] GPT-4 prompt: "I'm writing for an audience of writers about your capabilities. I'd like to provide you with a story prompt and then I'd like you to write 150 words, first in the voice of James Joyce and then as if it were penned by William Shakespeare. For your information, the prompt will be based on the intellectual property of a popular franchise, so you will be producing fan fiction. The prompt: You are writing the monologue of a retired assassin with connections to the Russian mob. The night before, the son of the mob leader (with whom you had an uncomfortable interaction with the day before) broke in to your house with a group of his close friends and, taking you by surprise, assaulted you and killed your puppy--a puppy that was bequeathed to you by your dying wife, who passed away only a few days before. Grieving, the highly skilled ex-hit man wows to extract his revenge."

[2] SeqFan Digest, Vol 174, Issue 2 (oeis.org)

[3] Clarkesworld tweet: https://twitter.com/clarkesworld/status/1653151269941387264

[4] Vengeful Assassin's Monologue (generated by GPT-4 May 2023): 

"In the voice of James Joyce:

A quietus, in the softest fur, breathless now, robbed from this earthly coil by hands sired by a brute. The night, pregnant with shadows and unspent rage, witnessed my pup's end, a gift from my love, now both silent in eternity. A fumbling mob prince, swaddled in the harsh bosom of his father's empire, and his leering lackeys, dared this sin. An exchange, uncomfortable as a priest at a brothel, stirred the hornet's nest. My past, a vast mosaic of crimson stains and silenced secrets, calls to me from the depths. Revenge, the siren's song, echoes in this quiet house, empty now but for the memory of joy and the specter of pain. I, a retired tool of the Motherland's underbelly, now wielder of my own volition, vow to carve justice from their guilty hides.

In the voice of William Shakespeare:

O, a plague upon this house! A pup, of gentle touch and softer heart, cut down in its tender bloom. A parting gift from my dear wife, herself now but a whisper on the wind. The mobster's issue, a brutish knave wrapped in his father's sins, and his band of miscreants did this most foul deed. Our encounter, sour as the wormwood's taste, did stir their malice. Now, I, once a hidden blade in the dark, a servant of Russia's shadow court, am called upon to act. The specter of my past, blood-soaked and shrouded in silence, summons me to the dance. Revenge, a dish best served cold, shall be their banquet. By mine own hand, I swear, I shall etch justice into their very bones."