Tackling Chapter 16. Having outlined the entirety of the second half, I have a helpful guide to continue revisions. Yet, I am changing as I go along, allowing for discovery in the process, letting the narrative go where it wants to go. There are still some unresolved questions, but I think it’ll eventually find the answers in the process. Having created a “narrative ecosystem” is helpful when I can plug certain plot holes. It makes it feel organic and justified. I don’t want to commit the unpardonable sin of forcing an error in order to generate drama or try to fit a round peg in a square hole in a certain moment so that it can pay off later. There should be a natural progression. To the reader, if there is surprise, if there is a change in character, those elements were planted before, and the reader can go back and see how those elements neatly link together.

The debate surrounding AI and apps like ChatGPT and MidJourney–amazing, awe-inspiring, concerning. I wonder if there will be a cultural shift where people consume their stories and pay no regard whether it was generated by a human or not. This tools will maintain and uphold certain power structures. That power will exploit them for economic and political objectives. I played with ChatGPT and MidJourney. I don’t like how both tools have been trained on the internet (a derivative and weird and odd repository of human experience). For 48 hours, like in some fever dream, I generated images using MidJourney. I was definitely floored. And I was excited. To have pure creation in my hands, even though the machine did the placement and framing. I can see how this is an addiction of sorts. But, I’m worried. If you use “person” in a prompt, it defaults to a “white man” in the image. To create an image with another kind of person, you have to explicitly embed a qualifier.

As for ChatGPT, I had it write student essays with some accuracy. I had it write movie scenes. It does not do well with humor or satire. But, it’s surprisingly close.

Art is uniquely human. I fear unloading this task further removes our intimacy with our dreams and emotions. Novelty might be teased out as images and words are generated, uploaded to the internet, scrubbed again, and then re-generated.