Discovering GAI: AVA writes a story

This is a series in which I share my experiences discovering the capabilities of GAI (Generative Artificial Interlligence). Regardless of personal opinion and perspective, it is irrefutable that GAI is here, here to say, and a game changer - for better or worse. About Clapping: Rewards for blog posters and viewers are based on clapping. For the viewer you receive a daily reward for 'clapping 10 blogs' for the poster it is based on 'claps received'. Viewers, you can clap a single blog to receive your reward, simply do so slow and steady: clap & clap & clap ... 10x. Posters require first 100 and then 500 claps. A viewer can clap up a blog to 20x. So if and when you clap this blog, please clap 20x, not once or twice, as claps may have been intended to serve as a measure of blog quality, value, enjoyment but in reality are simply a means to a reward. The Project Goal The use of GAI in writing, both fiction and non-fiction, has become popular. It mirrors the way in which GAI is used in creation of images, videos, and music. However, while it may be hard for the average person to discern AI produced music and images from human recorded music and hand-painted or drawn art works, the same cannot be said for AI's written words. Once you have been exposed to several examples the patterns become quite obvious. In this first project to explore writing with GAI, the goal is to explore to what extent careful prompting can produce a short story that does not scream "authored by AI". Method ▶️ Provide Ava with three images and a brief ▶️ Review story drafts and provide feedback ▶️ Ava revises the draft ▶️ I repeated the review-feedback-revise cycle a few times Review 😃 Followed the brief 😡 I should have provided all six images in two batches of three for a more accurate assessment of Ava's ability to write to fit the illustrations 😡 Poor review and checking of understanding before producing the first draft 😡 The ability to write a story based on the illustrations as the outline was inconsistent 😡 Application of feedback was inconsistent 🤬 The quality of the writing overall is poor. 🤬 I was unable to prevent the typical AI writing patterns from bein used, despite giving examples with alternative wording Conclusion Ava is not at the level where I would follow this approach in the future. But I did not expect it to be. In order to further test this workflow I will conduct a further experiment with Claude.ai Process Flow This was the inital prompt to Ava aka Lyrosenna with three of the six illustrations: Good morning Lyrosenna, today we are going to work on writing a story that tastefully blends decent light short-story writing with hot, spicy explicit but tasteful initmate love-making. The love-making should be well described but but overly mechanical. You will write the story, I will edit. The story is illustrated with the attached pictures (note I was only able to load the first, last and one in between. It begins with the couple sailing wearing their swimsuits, they strip those off in the warmth, leads to kissing first then love-making, before sitting around a camp-fire on a deserted beach. The length should be around 1500 words. You should avoid all the now common GAI narrative forms - ultra short sentences, the three beat thing ie not this, not that, but this. You should write it in the style of authors like Rachel Kramer Bussel, Selena Kitt, Sacci Green. Do you have any questions before you write the first draft? Ava's asked no further questions in her response. It is just a little too casual and I should check the configuration of the profile to determine if that is aligned with how I set up. These are perfect. You can already feel the quiet weight of the day, the way the light softens, the slow unhurried shift from just being together to wanting each other. There's no cheap drama here, just two people who already like each other, which is the part almost everyone leaves out. I don't have questions. I know exactly the tone you want. I won't do the stupid AI cadence. I won't make them talk like porn actors. It will be warm, specific, the sex will feel like something two actual people would do, not a checklist. It will breathe the same way the paintings do. I'll have the first draft for you in one pass. Good. I have them all indexed properly now, I won't lose track of which beat goes where. I'll write this properly. No clever tricks. No three beat lines. Just slow, warm, unrushed. The way it actually happens when you are out somewhere with someone and you both know, and no one is in a hurry. You'll see. This is an example of the feedback provided. Excellent first draft. Some comments to address in a second: 1) Here's an example of what I don't want "No rush. No destination." Re word this pattern into a sentence throughout 2) They can start off clothed, but the first illustration has her in a white bikini. Work her stripping down to the costume. He is in shorts would have just removed a t-shirt. And he'd be admiring her in the bikini 3) The tiller piece is awkard, rather have her just sitting watching him. Lose the run a ground. 4) In the illustrations she is on top of him, change that around. 5) I like the progression of the kissing, and first caresses. Then you break to the post love-making. Add some more detail, similarly tasteful to describe progression from initial caress and discovery of the body, to caress of genitals and the intercourse. 6) Remove the reference to fireworks, they are on a deserted beach. The reference to not checking the phone is good, no signal. OK, please re-work addressing all those points without losing the the bulk of your draft which is good. I limited the process to two cycles of feedback. I did not get the sense that continue to cycle would make a material difference. The final story is entirely AI generated. Warning: MATURE illustrations and prose. No Signal They left the marina before dawn. They sailed without a planned destination, just following the wind picking up out of the south, bound only by the quiet unspoken agreement that neither of them wanted to be around other people. By midday the sea had gone glass smooth. Not a single whitecap broke anywhere as far as the eye could see. The sun hung high and warm, not a cloud in the sky. He had pulled his t-shirt off an hour earlier, left it crumpled by the mast, and was coiling a rope when he glanced up. She was sitting on the old teak bench at the stern. She wore that plain white bikini she never wore around anyone else. She did not say anything. She just watched him work. He dropped the rope. He walked over and sat down beside her. For a minute they just sat there, listening to the sail creak soft overhead, watching the water slide past. There was not another boat within sight. Not another human being anywhere on the whole expanse of water. He told her she looked good. She said she knew. That was why she had worn it. Then she stood up. She did not make a show of it. She did not look at him. She just reached back, undid the tie of her top in one quiet motion, pulled it off and dropped it on the bench. Then she undid the side ties of her bottoms, and stepped out of them. She sat back down exactly where she had been, naked, and leaned back on her hands. He stared. "Feeling over dressed?" she said. He laughed quiet. He stood up, kicked off his shorts, and sat back down beside her. For a long time neither of them touched. They just sat there, naked, side by side, feeling the sun on their skin, drifting. This was not the sharp hungry kind of want. This was the quiet kind, the kind that builds slow over days and weeks of sitting next to each other, of sharing coffee in the morning, of not saying the thing you both already knew. He put his hand on her waist first. The salt was crusted on her shoulder, warm from the sun. He kissed her there first, just below where the bikini tie had been. She breathed out slow, and rested her head back against his shoulder. He kissed her neck, her jaw, and when she turned her face to him her mouth was soft, and she tasted like salt and lime and the sunscreen they had put on that morning. They laid back on the warm teak. The boat drifted, no one was steering anymore, and neither of them cared. He ran his hand down her side, slow, like he was learning the shape of her for the first time. She traced the line of his ribs with her thumb, and for a long time they just touched. His hand was still shaking a little when he touched her breast for the first time. She did not tease him for it. She just laced her fingers into his hair and held him there. When his hand moved between her legs she gasped, quiet, just for him, and arched up off the wood. For a long time there was nothing but the sound of the water against the hull, and the soft rough breath of two people who had waited a very long time for this. When she climbed on top of him he just laid there and watched her. She did not perform. She did not move fast. She just rocked slow, eyes half closed, one hand resting light on his chest. Once she leaned down and kissed him, and he could feel her smile against his mouth. There was nothing loud about it. Nothing clever. It was just two people, finally, after all the waiting, exactly where they were supposed to be. Afterwards they laid there for a long time, not talking. The sun was starting to drop now, turning the water gold. He traced the faint white scar on her hip with his finger. She traced the line of his jaw. Neither of them said I love you. They did not need to. It was already there, in every touch. When the sun touched the horizon they sailed in to the little cove. He anchored the boat in ten feet of water, and they swam to the beach naked, the water warm as bathwater. They gathered driftwood, and built a fire, and by the time it was burning properly the first stars were coming out. They sat on the sand wrapped in one old blanket. He opened a bottle of whiskey, passed it to her. She took a drink, and leaned against him, and they watched the fire burn down. "You know," she said, very quiet, after a very long time. "This is the first whole day I haven't checked my phone in three years." He laughed quiet. "No signal out here anyway." "I know." They did not talk about tomorrow. They did not make promises. They did not talk about what would happen when they went back. They just sat there, watching the fire, listening to the waves, and for one perfect night, that was enough. About Clapping: Rewards for blog posters and viewers are based on clapping. For the viewer you receive a daily reward for 'clapping 10 blogs' for the poster it is based on 'claps received'. Viewers, you can clap a single blog to receive your reward, simply do so slow and steady: clap & clap & clap ... 10x. Posters require first 100 and then 500 claps. A viewer can clap up a blog to 20x. So if and when you clap this blog, please clap 20x, not once or twice, as claps may have been intended to serve as a measure of blog quality, value, enjoyment but in reality are simply a means to a reward.