Over the past 6 months, I've slowly acclimated myself to the AI fad, experimenting with various AI tools from generative photo editing (changing the clothes of the models in a stock photo, for example) to having conversations with a bot about my work (see ChatPDF). I did explore Canva (simple to use) and a trial period of Midjourney (suuuuuuuuuuper complicated/was not a fan) to see what my characters and world would look like (see Lore-Building). The skeptic in me still finds fault with the process (and frustrated by those who use it for monetary gain), but the writer in me sees it as the gateway to Procrastination Nation. In a previous post, I talked briefly about worldbuilding with Pinterest boards. Which actor/actress looks like my characters? Which real life castle could be a stand-in for Sandthrop? What photograph best encompasses my setting? etc. What I didn't write in that post was how I struggled with these assignments. I don't pay attention to actors/actresses regularly and doing research to find the perfect actor was too much of a hassle. What if multiple setting inspired Druona? Plus, what do I search for in Pinterest to pull up the right images (especially if I don't even know what images I'm looking for)? Bing Image Create is the next big fad that I've seen making its rounds across social media, especially in the book groups I'm in. As a visual person, writing comes more easily if I can visualize the thing I want to create (more on this later). I got stuck on writing a scene where my MC is given her deceased father's ring. I knew what it looked like in my head, but I didn't know what it would look like-- as in, would it make sense in real life? So I turned to Bing Image Create to describe the ring in my head: "a masculine gold ring with a shank shaped like 2 swordfish, the shoulders shaped like its bills, and a pearl as the center stone."
What does worldbuilding look like in the age of AI? Personally, I don't feel pigeon-holed into building my world with things that exist. It might be a small, simple thing, but to see that ring made my world seem more real. I may not have the "people" figured out through Generative AI (every person I've generated seems to pull from the same model), but I can generate important objects and places. Granted, a reader's eyes will see completely different things from the writer, but for me, these visuals gratify me in more ways than a Pinterest board ever did. Of course, my generative creations are never done to gain profit. They go into folders, character sheets, and my worldbuilding boards. Other blog posts on Worldbuilding and Generative AI:
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While my Generative AI post was more informational rather than a critique of AI, this post will share my thoughts on the topic. My preconception of AI, ChatGPT, and generative AI was that it created lazy human beings. My thoughts on when the media was saturated with it were:
....until SF/F author L.Penelope's Footnotes newsletter where she mentioned a cool new tool: "ChatPDF--Upload a PDF and the chatbot will summarize it for you!" By this point, I felt like I was failing with my query letters and summaries and had no one to turn to. So my reason for following the link was to get an idea of how this chatbot would summarize my novel. HOWEVER, I ended up using it for something else entirely. Like all chatbots, ChatPDF will essentially have a conversation with you. Once you upload a your PDF and it "reads" it, it waits for you to talk to it. I asked it questions like "who is the main character and what do they want?" I was gleefully surprised when it told me about my main character and what exactly her motivations were. I asked it another question, "what's this novel about?" to which it replied "not enough information given".... which was understandable since I only uploaded the first three chapters (the paranoid skeptic in me didn't want to upload the whole manuscript). I uploaded more and more, asking it questions about various characters and plots, taking notes on the ones where the chatbot seemed to struggle with and noting the character summaries it gave me. I came to realize that, if chatbot struggled with my questions, then I hadn't written the character or the plot point well enough and therefore had to return to it and edit it. For example, I asked the bot about my Main Character's love interest. This is the response it gave me:
Oof! That was not what I wanted to hear. Its response wasn't as detailed as its characterization of my MC. It seemed to pull scenes but not interpret them like it when deducing my MC's motivations.
I made a note so that I could revisit this character's introduction to make it evident who he is and the role he will play in the story. ChatPDF is like having a critique partner. It never told me what to do or how to write, but helped me see the weak spots in my manuscript. I'd say, its a good tool for the initial editing phase, before it reaches a Beta reader, for example. I actually really like it! However, I stand firm in the belief that this tool (and all the others like it) cannot replace human interaction and input. My manuscript still needs human eyes, human thoughts, and human emotions to tell me whether or not what I am trying to convey comes across beyond just the words. I give this tool 3 out of 5 stars. Where it failed to earn the other two was that I found, the longer the PDF, the more chatbot "skimmed." There were questions I asked it where it said "no information" but the the answers I knew were in the story. I even directed it to a specific page ("that page does not exist") and a specific chapter ("that chapter does not exist"). So, it seems that it reads up to a certain point in longer PDFs. 50 pages at a time seems like the sweet spot, though. ----------------------------------------- Have you used this tool? What are your thoughts on AI and bots? This post is about race: I thought about putting a “warning” behind it, but realized it defeats the whole purpose of this post. Because, until anyone mentions race other than “white,” it is met with controversy. My race should not have to come with a trigger warning: I am a black woman and a BIPOC writer. Terms that have to be entered or applied in a world where the default function is set to “white.” The Default Argument, in programming language, is a function that when a value is not specified, results will return to the values initially specified in the parameters. This is why when you search for a term in images (depending on your location), the images you get will always be of the standard default (white) unless specified otherwise. ![]() Growing up, I never realized (or paid attention to) the defaults of the world. From a young age we were conditioned to associate the “default” with “white.” There is the idea that, unless a book character’s race is explicitly stated, then he or she is “white” (check out White As Default). Most recently when receiving feedback on my manuscript, a beta suggested I describe my main character’s description in chapter 1 so that they (singular “they”) could visualize her from the beginning. I sprinkled in a few key details throughout the first three chapters, stating that her mother was a black woman in the very first chapter, and detailing her physical features in chapter 2 and 3. “Aminat is not the typical Eurocentric heroine, just as Rivercross is not the typical Medieval-Renaissance-esque town. You should make that clear from the beginning,” said the Beta. Good feedback. However, you have the Janet Watson Chronicles, a retelling of Sherlock Holmes starring a queer black woman living in a dystopian society, where the author takes Every. Single. Opportunity. to hammer in that this character is black in the most stereotypical ways possible (from stares whenever she walks into a room, the “don't touch my hair” quips, the afro, people clutching their belongings when she walks by). Then you have the reverse: Book covers primarily featuring/favoring white characters regardless of their in-book description such as the case in the Liar controversy. I first came across this story in my first year of public librarianship researching displays. The story has been around since the book’s 2009 publication but has been popping up as a prime example in visibility (or lack thereof) when it comes to book covers and minorities, most recently mentioned in The Sistah Girl Next Door. ![]() “Default” once again resurfaced in library school where we learned that, when it comes to programming technology, black and brown faces are primarily kept out of the algorithms, leading things like automatic faucets not to recognize black and brown hands, and even facial recognition software to struggle. Generative AI technology needs specific descriptors to generate characters, or else it will automatically default to giving “white” results. You would never have to type “White woman reading” in Midjourney or other text-based generative AI applications. the cover photo for this post compares the results to “Woman reading” on Canva. Canva generates 4 results each iteration. All four results to this text for every iteration yielded the default white woman reading. Minorities must type “[insert race] woman reading." This is the same for stock photos. Nappy.co An ad on my newsfeed inspired this dive into “defaults”. Nappy.co states, “I love Unsplash, Pexels, and Shot Stash, but one of the things I’ve noticed is that all of their content could use a little more diversity. As an influencer mgmt agency for black and brown creators, we’re very intentional about cultural representation in the work that we do. And because of that, we aren’t always able to find the photos we need from those sites.” The site is simple: it provides diverse stock photos as a default. From hiking, families, office spaces, the people in the stock photos are of BIPOC. It eliminates the need to have to type in "black_____" to yield results. As an amateur photo manipulator (Gimp and Canva), when I illustrate my characters, the pool just got a whole lot broader with Nappy.co. Further Reading: ![]() Earlier this year, I attempted to submit a short story to Clarkesworld, but was met with a message about the publication submissions being closed due to the influx of AI submissions. With all the negativity in the world, I’ve kind of just put blinders on to most things, but this… This put AI on my radar. What did Clarkesworld mean by “AI submissions?” Clareksworld wasn't the only publication I went to with a “Closed because of AI” notice, and “ChatGPT” was a topic on the rise in the writing forums I frequent. It frustrated me… angered me like it angered tons of other creatives. What does this mean for my craft? How can editors sort through AI submissions and human generated submissions? Will creatives become obsolete? This post isn’t about that, though; this post is about the facts. According to a Forbes article published on June 1st, this is only the beginning. Generative AI tasks are projected to evolve and integrate into the following areas:
What are your thoughts on and experiences with AI? It's taken me until recently to discover its potential as a tool (vs. creator)— but that's for another post! Mentioned in post:
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