Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

Just wondering if anyone here has experience using it

I've played around with it a bit, and had it spit out a few story-like things to see what it was capable of. It's certainly impressive.

As far as actually using it to write a story, I feel like that would take the fun out of writing for me. In addition to plotting & worldbuilding, I enjoy the sentence-smithing part of writing, and I don't think GPT is at a point where you can exert enough control to actually get the story you wanted to write. I'm sure you could write a full story/storygame with GPT, but it would be at the cost of the author's creative control. Character/narrator voice is such an important part of a story, and it's hard to see how you could get a strong and distinctive character voice out of GPT as it currently exists.

I expect that eventually writing aids like this will be about as common as calculators. Maybe less so in the artistic/creative sphere, because many people like sentence-building, and even with a far more sophisticated tool, you're still going to be sacrificing a lot of creative control in every area. But I do expect people are going to be using these tools to write publishable novels in the near future, if they aren't already.

Right now the options seem to either be AI writing that is coherent but painfully dull and lacking in character, and also bound by strict content rules, or (in the case of NovelAI and its ilk) oozing with style but with a poor memory and constant struggles to handle situations as complex as "two people having a conversation" without falling into incoherence.

In both cases it seems like it would be faster to just write out a scene yourself than to repeatedly try to make the AI return the precise results you want. Although I've heard people say it's good for inspiration.

"Fixing" other's "mistakes" always feels easier than doing anything for yourself, I suppose. Should carry forward for editing AI generated text.

I've been playing with it some .  GPT still seems to have a very short memory span so in longer writing forms it can go off the rails rather easily, or simply just not take into account previously established details. It still needs a bit of consistent coaching to keep on track, and even then you have to redo a lot to put together a story how you want it. It doesnt seem to be at a point where you can have it push out a good couple thousand words and then you just do minor edits.

Yeah, a long way from writing novels anyway. Most have a memory of about 2000 characters, they're always just guessing from the most recent context.

They're fun to play with though, I'd still like to run a thread with NovelAI sometimes. But otherwise it's a pretty expensive little toy I can't justify staying subscribed to for the amount I use it.

The bigger issue for me is what Gryphon already said, you're handing the steering wheel to the AI. There's a lot of nuance and intention, foreshadowing etc going on with most characters and plots, big picture stuff that AIs at least at this point can't really grasp. They can ape an author's style or generate a really nice description of a landscape or get a B+ with an essay, but there's a lot more to a good story than that.

"The finer details" are something I'm not sure AI will be able to grasp. The key word might be intention. The AI never "knows" anything. It doesn't intend. Humans do, that's part of what makes art engaging. I think you hit the crux of it there. Still, it might be a good force multiplier for some people. One could have it spit out an ascetic, then plug and play the details. I'd be interested in exploring it someday.

inb4 using chat gpt to escape shame

I have been using it for research and as a testing ground of sorts. It definitely isn't viable for a full storygame.