Tag: Creativity

The sun was a blister in the sky, cracking the clay earth into a mosaic of despair. Elias knelt by the ruined plot, his fingers scraping at the dust. He remembered the seedlings, bright green promises against the brown, planted with a hope that now felt like a cruel jest. He’d watered, he’d tended, he'd even spoken softly to the soil, but the blight, unseen and absolute, had taken root first. His wife had wept when the last shoot withered, a sound Elias carried like a stone in his chest. Now, only the brittle, pale husks of dead weeds remained, monuments to a vanished dream of bounty. He pushed himself up, wiping the grit from his calloused palms. The air tasted of defeat, dry and metallic. Nothing ever grew there again.
Posted in AI and Creativity

A Story From a Reader – ‘Nothing Ever Grew There Again’

Posted on by Mike

Many thanks to Valerie for leaving this story in the comments. It was created with the help of Gemini. I thought I would give voice to it with the help of ElevenLabs. The voice is one from their library and the description is – ‘Michael – Deep, Resonant, Confident – a male British voice for a storyteller with a rough undertone.’ I hope Valerie approves.

I’ve included the audio and Valerie’s original text. I also put the story into ChatGPT’s new image generator for the picture above.

I hope you enjoy.

Nothing Ever Grew There Again – Audio

Nothing ever Grew There Again – Text

The sun was a blister in the sky, cracking the clay earth into a mosaic of despair. Elias knelt by the ruined plot, his fingers scraping at the dust. He remembered the seedlings, bright green promises against the brown, planted with a hope that now felt like a cruel jest. He’d watered, he’d tended, he’d even spoken softly to the soil, but the blight, unseen and absolute, had taken root first. His wife had wept when the last shoot withered, a sound Elias carried like a stone in his chest. Now, only the brittle, pale husks of dead weeds remained, monuments to a vanished dream of bounty. He pushed himself up, wiping the grit from his calloused palms. The air tasted of defeat, dry and metallic. Nothing ever grew there again.

About The AI Grandad

Find out more about The AI Grandad on:
YouTube – The AI Grandad
X – The AI Grandad
Facebook – Mike Jackson – The AI Grandad

What do you think AI creativity tells us about ourselves?
Share your thoughts in the comments, I love hearing from curious minds!

A humorous, Tim Burton-style blue monster with tentacle-like hair, uneven eyes, sharp teeth, and long fingers. It stands on two legs and looks directly at the viewer while a speech bubble says “Give me a caption.”
Posted in AI and Creativity

Caption This AI Image #3 – “Shh… We’ve All Agreed Not to Talk About It”

Posted on by Mike

Welcome to what is now becoming a regular Sunday post. If you want to see what I, or rather AI, did with captions sent in by readers last week and the week before, have a read of, Two Images, Two Captions, Two Stories.

Right, now let’s get back to this week’s image.

I came across this AI-generated image and felt that familiar little chill, the one that says something odd is happening here, and nobody’s explaining it. Everyone looks calm. Reasonable. Well dressed. And yet… they’re all making the same gesture, at the same time, as if rehearsed. Including the robot. Especially the robot.

I won’t tell you what I think is going on. That would spoil the tension. Instead, I’ll leave you with the image and let your imagination do the heavy lifting.

Continue reading “Caption This AI Image #3 – “Shh… We’ve All Agreed Not to Talk About It”” →
cartoon caricature of a small group of people, talking animatedly, looking skeptical, some with crossed arms
Posted in AI and Creativity

Writing With AI When Your Friends Don’t Approve

Posted on by Mike

There is a moment every writer meets sooner or later, often accompanied by the same slightly embarrassed smile. Someone asks what you are working on, and you mention that you use AI in your writing. You expect curiosity or at least a raised eyebrow. Instead, you get a faint wince. A gentle pullback. A polite cough followed by a change of subject. You can almost hear the unspoken verdict forming in their mind. It feels a little like turning up to a book club with a sandwich when everyone else has brought a homemade quiche.

Continue reading “Writing With AI When Your Friends Don’t Approve” →
Posted in AI and Creativity

Join Me Down The Rabbit Hole

Posted on by Mike

Every now and then I feel the urge to put up a short post when my experimentation excites me. And that’s what this post is!

I found a Drabble (100-word story) that AI and I had collaborated on a year or so ago. I wondered what would happen if I put the story into the prompt box for ChatGPT’s new image generation and simply asked, ‘Create an image that reflects this story.’

Here’s the image and the story:

Spare Parts

“Step on the scales, please. Clothes off, dignity optional. Ah, 78 kilograms. Slightly overweight, but don’t worry, we’ve a category for that. Category K, ‘Moderately Useful for Spare Parts.’ Oh, you thought this was about wellness? How quaint. No, we’ve abandoned that old NHS model. Too costly. This is resource management. Let me see… lungs, average. Liver, below average. Kidneys, passable, though a bit scuffed. Eyes? Blue. Valuable. You’ll be pleased to know you’ll be recycled into three future citizens. I’m told the procedure is relatively pain free. Don’t worry, we’ll inform your wife you won’t be home for tea”

My Thoughts

What I found most intriguing was, not only does the image represent the story extremely well, but it was the way it had used lines from the story to embellish the story. So, you get the various screens displaying body weight, lungs average, liver below average etc. Mindblowing!

Call To Thought

If you haven’t played with this latest image generator do give it a go and join me down the rabbit hole.

About The AI Grandad

Find out more about The AI Grandad on:
YouTube – The AI Grandad
X – The AI Grandad
Facebook – Mike Jackson – The AI Grandad

What do you think AI creativity tells us about ourselves?
Share your thoughts in the comments, I love hearing from curious minds!

A blurred reflection of an older man’s silhouette in a studio window, with a microphone visible, suggesting voice recording and quiet unease.
Posted in AI and Creativity

Writing, Emotion Tags, and a Voice That Sounds Like Me

Posted on by Mike

This post is part of an ongoing habit of trying small, contained experiments rather than grand declarations about what AI can or cannot do. In this case, the experiment was simple: could a short piece of writing be performed by an AI voice in a way that felt deliberate rather than mechanical?

I prompted ChatGPT to write a brief dystopian monologue and asked it to include emotional cues directly in the script. I then copied and pasted the text into ElevenLabs and generated the audio using a cloned version of my own voice. No editing, no post-production, no technical tinkering. Just text, instructions, and a voice.

What interested me wasn’t realism or polish, but interpretation.

The Audio – ‘Where Silence Is Suspicious’

Continue reading “Writing, Emotion Tags, and a Voice That Sounds Like Me” →