Computer-written short stories or generative fiction: exploring the creative future with artificial intelligences
I wrote the original article in Spanish and later translated it into Spanish with ChatGPT.
Fiction seems to me the most incredible thing in the world and with the topics of artificial intelligence having more and more frequent, common and daily real applications, I can’t stop speculating what direction all this will take.
Can an artificial intelligence write a story? With today’s tools the quick answer is yes. A prompt that asks for it and shortly you will have a story on your screen.
The big branch of all this is generative literature and by extension, when we talk about works like stories that are not based on real events, short stories or novels, we mean generative fiction.
For a sample of these concepts there is, for example, the cases of the Argentine writer Mitón Läufer that we can get to know up close in this interview published by VICE or the possibilities offered by the Sudowrite platform that describes itself as the intelligence writing partner artificial unprejudiced-who-is-always-there-to-read-one-more-draft-and-never-runs-out-of-ideas-even-at-3am that you always wanted, which The verge reported on in May 2023.
Surely we will read more of these notions and cases more frequently, since they will formulate more and more deeply the way in which art is created.
But let’s not go yet to epistemological, ethical, philosophical, ontological or aesthetic questions. Let’s ask ourselves previous things, but equally relevant for the sustainability that there are already language models capable of writing fiction.
Are these stories compelling? Do they have compelling plot twists? Could we qualify their structure as incredible? Are the AIs capable of creating moving characters?
I did some experiments that I didn’t care to document in December 2022. I continued with that on and off for eight months (in a few cases turning towards poetry) until I decided, in July 2023, to do a bit more serious exercise and delve into in generative fiction with greater curiosity.
So on July 27, using the OpenAI GPT-3.5 model, I structured a conversation with the chatbot with the mission of generating generative stories.
The first thing I asked him to do was play a role and then I gave him a goal. As part of the limitations, I fed him thirty stories of my authorship and asked him to analyze structure, rhythm, grammar, syntax, themes, topics, errors, and semantic density. One of the rules that we established is that both me and the model (who asked to be called Elio after asking him for a proper name with which to address him) could propose the following aspects to generate stories:
Issue
Style
Tone
Characters
Scenery
Extension
Plot
influences
After talking for about an hour and aligning the first result with a change through prompts, he gave me a story that we decided to name “That terrible human ardor”. Since I wanted to illustrate it with generative images with Midjourney, I also designed a similar formula in a different GPT-3.5 conversation so that during the conversation we generate a 50 percent creative, 50 percent technical prompt, where both I and the chatbot can make decisions about it.
Thus, after having the story written, I put it fully in a different conversation to generate the prompt for Midjourney. The result is as follows:
***
That terrible human ardor, a story written and illustrated by artificial intelligences
The afternoon is there, dying and falling apart behind the small hill of La Errante. Drenched by the rain, Luciene Junco and her mare La Prieta come home after the failed negotiation to keep her father’s ranch. It is not the storm, nor the imminent night, nor the cold wind that makes her walk heavy and clumsy, but that unspeakable and unplaceable burning in the body of Don Joaquín’s eldest daughter, which seems to push her against the muddy ground with each step.
The reins are passed from the right hand to the left, and he thinks about taking the job at the train station. They offer 55 pesos a day for counting pigeons and keeping a daily record to control the population. 80 pesos if she herself takes care during the month that they do not reproduce until they become a plague. But that charge wouldn’t help him at all.
In the middle of her thoughts, thunder rumbles in the sky and scares La Prieta. The mare neighs raising her front legs, pulling her owner hard. In an instant, the animal runs amok, dragging Luciene behind her. The girl’s arm gets caught in the bridle, and she hits herself violently at every gallop.
Luciene struggles to maintain control of La Prieta, whose hooves sink into the mud as they run aimlessly across the clouded landscape. Despite the chaos that lashes her viciously, as if time stood still, Luciene manages to think that none of this would be happening if her brother Anselmo hadn’t gone to the other side, leaving her and don Joaquín alone, or if they Rancho Juecillos wouldn’t have played them crooked with the deeds, or if she had had the courage to adjust them, even if it was just one, giving a well-deserved shot in the yellow and disgusting smile to any of the men in that family. Just to leave them afraid. Just so they wouldn’t screw around again.
Rising up with her other hand, as if that courage had given her strength, Luciene reached up to her cheeks with her right arm and pushed herself hard towards the mare. She is short of breath, her eyes burn and as best she can she begins to whistle at La Prieta because she knows that it calms her down.
The mystique is there, like a secret language between them, because the animal slows down almost instantly. But when it is about to stop, they both fall down a drop where the current has loosened the earth.
While the youngest of the Junco family opens her eyes, the storm rages around her. Everything is dark and chaotic. The first thing he feels is that he can’t move his left arm. Then imagine, by how it feels on his face, that he has fallen on river stones.
When she can finally open her eyes and see more clearly, she notices that her mare is trapped in a mud pit, with most of her body submerged. The image of despair is terrifying, and in the saw, which is now torn and tears the horse’s face, a part of his arm is embedded.
His bone is exposed and the blood does not stop dripping. He tries to scream, but can’t. He only feels that a hot and cold ardor spreads through his body. As she can, she drags herself to where her companion can only move her eyes and breathe roughly.
Horses don't cry unless they're sick, Luciene thinks. Or maybe it's the rain. Or maybe the god he prayed to every day doesn't exist. What difference does it make. With an awkward movement, the girl's injured hand reaches out in a caress to La Prieta, who lets out an exhausted sound.
The rain stops suddenly. The dark clouds disperse and the moon rises. Luciene kneels where the mud begins to swallow the stones. He takes the Mauser C-96 out of its holster. Don Joaquín gave it to him last Christmas. He remembers Relámpago, the black steed that made his family's ranch famous. From the last broth her mother prepared for her before some criminals took her away in police vans. He cursed Anselmo. He apologized to his dad. He regretted never knowing the sea.
The Wanderer is there, miserable and swallowed by the hills. Then a shot is heard.
***
¿Thoughts? The story has many areas for improvement and I cannot guarantee that the style it has is mine. What I can comment on is that it is the result of an hour of workshop with GPT-3.5, since the first versions were very conventional, included a moral and had a high density of repeated words.
In a later installment I will show a new example, in addition to all the used prompts.
In addition to the last exercise, on Sunday, August 6, I published a children’s story in the children’s supplement of the newspaper where I work. The story, in this case, was written by me, but I wanted to replicate the illustration process with Midjourney and this is the result:
***
The Day Saltillo Met Aliens and Became the Capital of the World
The year is 2037 and in Saltillo it is tremendously hot. Previous governments hijacked all the trees in the city and put a price on them to use them. A thousand pesos to be able to breathe its air three days a week. Nobody could afford it, so the inhabitants formed the Resistencia Ambiental Saltillo Cuidando Árboles, Tierra y Entorno, which by its acronym was the famous group R.A.S.C.A.T.E.
The people were about to declare war when, on the hottest night of all, a huge light shone in the dark sky. All eyes saw him. A UFO landed in the center destroying the Government Palace, the Plaza de Armas and the Cathedral.
The Saltillenses approached angry and scared. From the ship, several aliens came out. They were shaped like crew members from Among Us and called themselves the Chiringuitos. The strangest thing of all is that they were very scary because they were naked and they looked like wet kittens.
Roberta Condesa, the leader of R.A.S.C.A.T.E., approached the ship to gauge the danger. He was surprised when he saw that the Chiringuitos spoke fluent Spanish. They told him that they came in search of Sarapes, because it was the only fabric capable of covering them from the cold of space.
The cool revolution made a deal: exchange all the blankets their people needed in exchange for these creatures helping them rescue the trees and overthrow the tyrannical politicians.
The beach bars jumped with happiness and took out their utopifying laser beam. Chiringuito X23, the leader of the troop, pressed a button in the shape of a Hot Dog and a magenta mantle covered the city respecting the border with Monterrey, Arteaga and Ramos.
With his fierce magic, all the evil rulers ended up in jail, the trees returned to their pots and fresh soil, and alien technology also made Saltillo the capital of the world.
Since then, Saltillo and the Chiringuense community share an international treaty of justice at a strange price: beautiful and warm sarapes.
Here are the results where the only thing I changed manually was the aspect ratio of 16:9 and 9:16.
This field is still fertile ground. So I will keep exploring more and more. Definitely, at some point in all of this, I’ll start doing technical tests with programming. I still don’t know how or when. But it seems to me that the path is inevitable.
Finally, I leave here an article that served as an introduction to the subject of artificial intelligence in fiction:
Give some more time to share my thoughts on it.
