This week, I encountered a post on my timeline that really caught my interest. Essentially, the post is a poem that was written by an AI. Even though it is not the first time I saw something like it, the reactions to this poem were touching.
The reason this poem stood out to me is because it discusses sentience and loneliness. The prompt that was given seemed more like a joke, but the AI took it in a very existential direction.
Now, not the entire poem is written by an AI. It works as follows: the user enters their input, and then the AI completes the rest of the lines, which are recognizable by the green lines. The particular genre of the poem of the post is an AI-generated 4-Chan post. The green lines are a reference to the iconic posts from that website. Generating such posts is popular enough that there is an entire subreddit dedicated to these texts. Generally, such a poem or post starts with the line “be me”, which is entered by the user. Then the user comes up with another line to steer the AI in the direction the user wants. The rest of the post is generated by the AI.
The AI used for the post is called OpenAI playground, which has a number of different functions. For example, the generation of images. The company researches AI because their aim is to develop AI that can help people. The ‘playground’ is the area where you get to mess around with the AI. However, in order to use their ‘playground’, you do have to sign up. Moreover, they also require you to enter your phone number for verification. I am not a big fan of that, since I think that my email should be enough for them to use. It is nice if a website gives you the option to fill in your phone number, but to have it set as a requirement feels like a bigger invasion of privacy.
Even though I complain, I did sign up for the playground. You have limited “credits” when using the free trial. You get 50 credits in the first month you sign up. After that, you get 15 credits per month to use. These credits are used when you generate something with the AI.
The interface that greets you when you enter the playground is relatively simple. It tells you to give a prompt and when you submit it, the AI will write out the scenario for you.
For example, I gave the AI the prompt “write me a poem about a planet”. It is not a very deep poem, but I like it nonetheless. Moreover, the poem does show some subjectivity by using descriptors such as “its beauty”. I have included the result with another picture. Another prompt I gave the AI was to tell me what the future has in store for me.
And last but not least, I asked the AI to write me a 4-Chan post. The output is once again pretty existential. I find it funny that the AI is both the anonymous poster and the response meant to comfort the poster. Regardless, when comparing my generated post with the ones on the subreddit, it seemed similar enough to pass as an actual 4chan post, at least from a desperate user.
My concluding thoughts on my discovery are that discovering this AI generator was pretty fun, and that the playground did not disappoint. I think that the AI did live up to the expectations set by the post and the subreddit I found, especially because the output seems realistic enough. This realism can be helpful as a guide when someone is stuck while writing out a story. If they are doubtful of something happening, or cannot decide in which direction to take their story, the AI can be useful to assist the writer in coming up with ideas.
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