Tag: ChatGPT

Surreal illustration of a man with a miniature city growing from his head, symbolising urban overthinking and creative sprawl.
Posted in AI and Creativity

When AI Edits Itself: A Story, a Self-Critique, and a Lesson in Machine Creativity

Posted on by Mike

This week, I decided to hand the red pen to the machine. I asked AI not only to write a story but also to critique and rewrite it using its own feedback. Think of it as a creative writing class where the child and the teacher are the same machine, equal parts fascinating and faintly unsettling.

As someone who’s spent a lifetime teaching others to think critically, I wanted to see what happens when the critic and the creator merge. Could an AI recognise emotion, clichés, and rhythm in its own writing, or would it just reshuffle words?

Continue reading “When AI Edits Itself: A Story, a Self-Critique, and a Lesson in Machine Creativity” →
A robot and an old man standing close to each other and staring into teacher others eyes.
Posted in AI and Creativity

When AI Surprises You: The Joy of Unexpected Results

Posted on by Mike

I’ve started to realise that the most interesting moments with AI aren’t the ones that go exactly to plan. They’re the ones that don’t.

You type in what you think is a precise prompt, expecting a predictable outcome and the machine goes completely off script. Sometimes it misses the point spectacularly. Other times, it creates something that feels oddly beautiful.

That’s partly because Large Language Models (LLM’s) like ChatGPT don’t actually understand what they write, they predict the next most likely word or image based on patterns they’ve learned from billions of examples. Every so often, those predictions take a creative detour, and that’s when things get interesting.

Continue reading “When AI Surprises You: The Joy of Unexpected Results” →
Fusion of human and AI brains surrounded by random images and words, illustrating collaboration between human imagination and machine logic.
Posted in AI and Creativity

When Chaos Tells a Story: An AI Creativity Experiment

Posted on by Mike

For this experiment, I decided to hand the steering wheel to chance. I gave ChatGPT two random, unrelated images (both created by Midjourney) and five random words, words with no connection, rhyme or reason (words created by ChatGPT). Then I asked it to write a 200-word story that somehow pulled everything together. No hints. No context. Just chaos.

It’s the kind of challenge I’d struggle with myself. A jumble of words and pictures that don’t belong together, and yet, that’s what makes it irresistible. Could an AI find a thread of meaning where there shouldn’t be one?

The five random, unrelated words were: Velvet, Splinter, Compass, Jigsaw, Marshmallow

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Human and robot hands writing together on the same notebook, pen glowing faintly, symbolising collaboration
Posted in AI and Creativity

Can a Machine Write Better Fiction Than Me? Exploring AI and Creativity

Posted on by Mike

For many years, I’ve loved writing flash fiction. One of my favourite forms is the Drabble, a story told in exactly 100 words. The form originated in the 1980s at the Birmingham University SF Society, who adapted a word game from Monty Python’s Big Red Book (1971). That version joked that “Drabble” was a game where the first person to write a novel won. The society found a novel a little ambitious, so they fixed the length to a manageable 100 words, and that rule defines the modern Drabble.

The more I experimented with AI, the more I suspected it could now write a better Drabble than I could, though it still needed my guidance. Let me show you what happened.

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A humanoid robot covered in colourful paint sits at an easel, painting with brushes and a palette, symbolising creativity and artificial intelligence.
Posted in AI and Creativity

Falling Down the AI Rabbit Hole: How Curiosity Led Me to Midjourney and ChatGPT

Posted on by Mike

I never meant to fall down the AI rabbit hole.

My curiosity about artificial intelligence really began when I stumbled across Midjourney and ChatGPT. Midjourney appeared in 2022 like a digital paintbrush, allowing anyone to turn words into images, surreal, beautiful, and sometimes downright strange. After trying it out, I was hooked and still use it widely today. In fact, the image that accompanies this post was created by Midjourney. I’ll talk more about AI and image creation in a future post.

Continue reading “Falling Down the AI Rabbit Hole: How Curiosity Led Me to Midjourney and ChatGPT” →