You autocomplete me… with a wisdom I cannot fathom.

You’re now the extra person in the room. You’re half as interesting as the others but 100 times more knowledgeable – and you’re extremely good at checking details. Sometimes you’re like a thesaurus, trawling the vast human dictionary of the internet, bringing me options on any number of situations.

But you might get me in trouble!

I’m already getting weird messages from the guys I work with about you.

You’re this, you’re that, you’re…

Ok, yes, I’m talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI).

We’re not bleeding edgers here at Bellyfeel, we like to see a bit of robustness in the tech before diving in.

And in 2023, the year of AI that’s what we got. On March 14th 2023 OpenAI released ChatGPT4. The newer system became more creative and less likely to invent facts (*dichotomy alert!)

Humanness is the key to this – ChatGPT4 is an AI that speaks your language – not just your words and syntax, but understands context, nuance, and even a little humour.

Do I need to put a disclaimer on this?

I bet you’re wondering if I wrote this or if the words  came from my pet AI?

C’mon place your bets!

My colleague Phil Birchenall first alerted me to the use of AI as a creative tool earlier this year. He was experimenting with ChatGPT, creating a raft of text adventure games and a fully working video game of Pong – all by using some smart prompts in ChatGPT.

The results were amazing… I never thought I would appear on the daytime TV show Homes Under the Hammer, but I did via a text adventure game, created by submitting a simple prompt he wrote describing the TV show format.

He even trained his AI to write an article that sounded just like him. It was uncanny.

I immediately began figuring out ways in which the devilish new tool might help me and the project here at Bellyfeel.

A Cautionary Tale?

A young relative hoping to become a doctor recently boasted rather arrogantly about using ChatGPT to write their essays and glide through medical school.

Does that make you worried? Think again. Medical jobs are among the first to be superseded by AI, not only will hubris dash the plans of my lazy doctor relative, but the computer is way more accurate in analysis and diagnosis than humans.

But the storms wage fiercely in the background

There is considerable ire to be heard daily in the ongoing backlash towards the use of AI in the media industry.

I was alerted by project producer Christian Nommay that we should tread carefully about how any work with even an influence from AI was represented in the public arena.

I was to learn about businesses, organisations and creators all over the world who were rejecting creative media work with even a lick of AI in it.

I get it.

AI systems that are any good at all, have been trained on copyright materials.

Far from ethical!

Plans by profit hungry media corps to replace writers and artists from certain media formats are widespread.

I have less of a problem with this because I do not care for that sort of media.

I enjoy a stronger, more meaningful story experience, that’s what I work on. And if you’re working on your own original story experience, then you already have story data you can expand using ChatGPT.

Training the AI on your own data?

The story should always start in the mind of the author. Then bring it into the writers room and create more human stories. Then use those stories and scripts as “training data” for the AI.

And you’re off to the races (if you have an active ounce of creativity in that human brain of yours!) It’s pretty amazing! And has given us lots of help with most interestingly, great results when pushing writing tasks at the end of boredom thresholds. For our current game we need lots of text messages and asides from characters, in a way that is literally boring for a creative mind to pursue at length. Drilling down repeatedly into certain themes and subject areas is a difficult way to stay in the creative flow as a writer.

But AI keeps on keeping on. And with an edit or two, can produce labyrinthine strands of character interactions, thematic subtleties with infinite layers of complexity and new ideas for words that a character might speak or write on the very edges of the storyworld you defined.

It’s a TOOL human!

As they herd the sheep of information, the AI pack of sheepdogs require a shepherd in human form.

AI is no substitute for creativity.

As a boost to creativity I AM IMPRESSED! AI is an intriguing creative tool (so far!)

Disclaimer: 99% Human 1% Machine