I love listening to AI podcasts. Recently there has been a lot of discussion about Claude’s (Anthropic) growing expertise in creating code. Some experts were suggesting that by the end of the year AI will be writing 90% of all code.
Now, I know absolutely nothing about coding but I am forever curious. So, I asked Claude, “Can you write a piece of code that can generate pieces of flash fiction?” I was expecting a simple answer, instead it replied, “Absolutely. Given your flash fiction expertise, I’ll build something with the kinds of constraints and parameters you’d actually use – genre, word count limits, tone, specific prompts or themes.”
… and that is exactly what it did. I watched as line upon line of code appeared on the screen. It was all meaningless to me. But then I was presented with a ‘Flash Fiction Generator’. It had a number of drop down boxes:
- Genre – where I could choose from horror, literary fiction, speculative, dystopian, noir, gothic, magical realism, psychological, slice of life, weird fiction.
- Tone – dark, melancholy, atmospheric, unsettling, wistful, bleak, sardonic, tender, ominous, absurdist.
- Word Count – 50-words through to 1,000-words.
- Perspective – first, second, third, unreliable narrator, unusual POV (animal/object).
I didn’t input any of this information. I’m thinking it based it all on previous stories I have written using Claude.
Then I had three ‘optional’ boxes – setting, theme and special constraint. Once I had made my choices I simply clicked on the button ‘Generate Flash Fiction’ and let AI work its magic.
Here is an example of what it can create. I filled the boxes in like this…
- Genre – dystopian
- Tone – dark
- Word Count – 100-words
- Perspective – third
- Setting – I left blank
- Theme – I left blank.
- Special Constraint – The last line must be a question.
The boy watched his mother measure their water ration into three glasses. Two fingers’ worth each. She’d taught him fractions this way, halves, thirds, quarters diminishing with the years.
Through the kitchen window, the reservoir gleamed like a promise someone had forgotten to keep. Full, his father said. Overflowing, even. But the meters on their wrists blinked red: INSUFFICIENT CREDITS.
His mother’s hands trembled as she divided the water again, pouring hers between his glass and his father’s.
“Mum,” he said, “when you’re gone, will we still pretend we had a choice?”
While this may not be the greatest story ever written I was more interested in the process. I had created code to create a ‘Flash Fiction Generator’. (Well, maybe not me, but Claude wouldn’t have done it without me asking that original question!)
But, what I now had was a generator that could create a wide variety of pieces of flash fiction. I could also go back to Claude and ask it to add to the code if I wanted to add to any of the drop down boxes. It would be extremely easy to make this very simple story generator much more complex.
A final note. As is my want I fed the story into ChatGPT’s image generator for an image to go with the story. I then put the opening to this post in for a feature image.
Let me know what you think.
The AI Grandad 