Tag: Writing with AI

A surreal sci-fi museum interior where curious aliens peer through glass viewing portals at human exhibits. Humans appear only as silhouettes inside labelled display cases, while alien visitors react with shock and confusion. Soft glowing lights, dark futuristic architecture, and cinematic shadows create a calm yet unsettling atmosphere with dark humour.
Posted in AI and Creativity

What Happens When You Ask AI One More Question?

Posted on by Mike

As I’ve mentioned before I often find myself disappearing down the AI rabbit hole. I have this fear that one day I’ll drop down and never come back up again! My latest journey into the abyss was most entertaining. Let me explain what happened.

In a post yesterday, Bath Night and ChatGPT, I took a story that I had written long before I discovered AI and put it into ChatGPT’s new image generator to see what it would make of my writing. I was impressed with the outcome.

A glass-fronted alien zoo display shows an empty clawfoot bath filled with toys, towels and steam, observed by curious extraterrestrials. Built into the display unit is a clear caption panel reading “Exhibit 7B: Bath Night”, explaining the human ritual of bathing, its social purpose, and the aliens’ bafflement at its appeal.

So, this morning I thought, “I wonder what would happen if I reversed the experiment? In other words, what story would AI give me in response to the picture as the prompt?” I put the image and this text into Claude, ‘Give me a 200 word story based on this image. Add in some dark humour.’ This is what it gave me:

Continue reading “What Happens When You Ask AI One More Question?” →
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

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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.

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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.

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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’

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