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Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

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Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#301

Post by wpietri »

xienze wrote: post #266
weeksie wrote: post #249

A fun experiment but LLM generated stories will never escape the uncanny valley, because they're not novel, they're remixes. I know the critique of that position is "but humans just remix the things they know from the world" but that is the same misunderstanding that those who thought truck driving jobs would be automated by 2018 made about that profession. i.e. The less you know about a field, the more likely you ar…

> Voice is special because of the uniqueness of the human life behind it This IMO is a handwavy criticism of AI-generated content by people judging content who have the foreknowledge that the content was AI-generated. To put it another way, pretend it was a year (or more) ago and ChatGPT/Stable Diffusion were ~unknown. You stumble across this kids book. Be completely honest here: would your reaction be "there's no wa…

My reaction would still be, "This is a pretty bad children's book."

The reason I might not have guessed it was a machine creation is that the prose is adequate on a technical level, and previous markers for machine creation included wonky prose. But going forward we'll all learn new markers for machine-created dreck.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#302

Post by oytis »

weeksie wrote: post #249

A fun experiment but LLM generated stories will never escape the uncanny valley, because they're not novel, they're remixes. I know the critique of that position is "but humans just remix the things they know from the world" but that is the same misunderstanding that those who thought truck driving jobs would be automated by 2018 made about that profession. i.e. The less you know about a field, the more likely you ar…

Yeah, probably not replacing human-generated fiction immediately, but it's higher quality than all of my extempore bedtime stories I must admit.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#303

Post by yojo »

aschobel wrote: post #285
belval wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked on the link agreeing with you and came back disagreeing. Maybe I wouldn't have thought "an LLM made this", but the story is disjointed in a way that makes no sense for a children's book. The structure is all wrong. -> Hedgehog making bread -> Loves making bread -> One day bread stolen -> Butter everywhere -> Hedgehog sets out to find culprit -> Finds culprit -> Opens butter themed amusement park with culpri…

This is the prompt they used > Once upon a time there was porcupine. Every day, she baked a loaf of bread. One day the loaf disappeared. Because of that, she had too much butter. Because of that, things got slippery. Until finally she opened the first ever butter theme park. It seems like the LLM did exactly what the author wanted

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. That prompt is in the credits and super relevant to the discussion.

I read the prompt and I can see the human’s intention: write a story about how you turn something bad into something good. But the AI transitions didn’t land and instead of getting a heartwarming story of a clever hedgehog, it just feels like a badly executed Deus Ex Machina.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#304

Post by pixl97 »

glofish wrote: post #283
social_quotient wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't take this as a trolling question, but I can't help but wonder if this sentiment towards AI generated art and creativity is similar to how a chef might feel about shrink wrapped frozen food factories. Just like how a frozen meal can be thrown in the microwave and still be considered a meal, AI generated art can still be considered creative and beautiful. But, as we all know, the timing and execution to properly…

But it is not like that ... at all. Analogies run the risk of being completely wrong. A frozen food is made of real food, the process all starts from scratch with "natural" ingredients (well ingredients). The frozen food vs fresh cooked food is more like a film vs live acting. Or listening on tape vs a live concert. Even this analogy is lacking, a frozen food is made fresh at some point, it is about mass production n…

Um, I'm pretty sure your analogy fell off the truck and got ran over at some point...

Trying to take the 'freshness' of food and compare it to storytelling is just an abject failure here as the vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast majority of storytelling has no freshness at all, it's rehashing of the same basic plot elements, hell, was it the Greeks that stated this a few thousand years ago?

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#305

Post by mvnuweucxqokii »

driscoll42 wrote: post #206
theden wrote: post #194

I also ain't a big fan of the idea, a few thoughts * (Currently) Most AI generated images have an aesthetic to them, so it's easy to spot sometimes. Typically low-res, smeared details, bad hands/body horror. This may improve over time, but I don't know how I'd feel ethically (both morally and in work/effort) leaning so hard on AI. * For me at least, as soon as I learn something creative is completely (or mostly) AI g…

Really? This may be AI generated to an extent, but it's also showing that the author and friends worked together and put together a labor of fun and love for a pair of friends. That'll have more meaning to that family than a random kid's book.

"labor"

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#307

Post by pixl97 »

adamauckland wrote: post #161
robertlagrant wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a person learns how to paint expertly by looking at (and even copying, stroke for stroke) paintings, would you consider that immoral, and those paintings having been stolen? If not, what would you say the difference is?

Morality aside, an artist who entirely copies someone else's work would be looked down upon because they are not original or creating anything novel or new.

So scribes were looked down upon in the middle ages for making copies of books before the printing press?

I think in the tech industry we get caught up on 'novel' and 'new' because duplication is cheap to the point of almost free.

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#308

Post by sdwr »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #276
belval wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked on the link agreeing with you and came back disagreeing. Maybe I wouldn't have thought "an LLM made this", but the story is disjointed in a way that makes no sense for a children's book. The structure is all wrong. -> Hedgehog making bread -> Loves making bread -> One day bread stolen -> Butter everywhere -> Hedgehog sets out to find culprit -> Finds culprit -> Opens butter themed amusement park with culpri…

Please do this analysis on other children's books, I think you will find something similar. These aren't masterpieces of storytelling...

The ones that have stood the test of time are masterpieces of storytelling. They shine insight into a facet of life. They have a strong throughline, a message without moralizing. The best ones ground an experience to make it tangible to parent and child.

Where the Wild Things Are - a fever dream about rebellion and unrealized sexuality, hero's journey into the latent world and back.

Green Eggs and Ham - picky eating works on its own, or can stand in for just about any other unpleasant experience. The repetition mirrors the real-life experience of getting used to something you don't like.

Can't remember the name, about fuzzy little monkey people living in a hut? - really cozy, about the warmth and safety of being a cuddled-up tiny person without worry.

There's no throughline in this one. The prickly porcupine stands in for a stressed mom. The fairy stands in for a child who messes up the kitchen. The solution is play all day and leave the kitchen dirty? Doesn't hold together.

I'd take out the filler "journey" bit, add in some conflict between the mom and kid, and make the ending more realistic (fairy uses magic to make icing for the cake?). That might bring it up to library-filler tier book.

To me, the art looks really impressive though. Again, no throughline - I'd expect a progression that goes from lonely porcupine -> in the wilderness -> sharing the stage -> back at home but happy

Re: Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney

#309

Post by the_af »

nemo44x wrote: post #282
sanp wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps the core idea of the story can still come from you but ChatGPT can help flesh out the details in write it in a compelling manner.

That's how I see it. IT could still involve a lot of novel thought and work to get the AI to generate text you want. You nudge it in whatever direction you want it to go.

What actual problem about writing would this solve?

This is like coming up with a plot idea and having some hired writer write it. This already existed before computers. So you're essentially using GPT as a ghostwriter, only (unlike human ghostwriters) it has no way to come with something innovative, it just regurgitates whatever it's already in its data in some way or another.

"But," I can guess you'll object, "human (ghost)writers are already writing derivative crap, what's the difference?". Exactly. We already know how to hire humans to write derivative crap, and the truly good stuff is out of the question for GPT. So what is this solving?

But what about children's bedtime stories? Well, there are tons of really good bedtime stories, lovingly crafted by good authors. Do we need automated ones written by ChatGPT?

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