There’s Still a Place in the World for a Textile Writer
Last week I read a funny article, “Send a Baby to Mars!” Kelsey Piper wrote in Vox about petitions generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), based on the language of actual petitions submitted to Change.org. My personal favorite: Help Bring Climate Change to the Philippines!
The article was about a system, GPT-2, that takes any sample text (not just petitions) and predicts the next words. There was a link to a simplified system that the public can use, and I had to try it for myself.
I started with a nice, general opinion — “What I love about quilts is…”
And this is what I got:
First AI response to “What I love about quilts is…” Source: TalkToTransformer.com
It was pretty good, but the idea that it’s easier to design quilts and create them than to use a free website to share them, is not exactly accurate.
If that first response is not what you’re looking for, you can just generate another. So I tried that, and this time GPT-2 started its own little interview, providing both questions and answers.:
Second AI response to “What I love about quilts is…” Source:TalkToTransformer.com
I really love “What is your favorite book that has inspired you to quilt?” I think we could all write long posts about that!
And this response was echoed in the real world — I was showing my latest quilt to my neighbors, and they said, “Look at all those colors and patterns, and when you think about it, it is all from the same basic fabric!” It reminded me of this first paragraph.
Next I ventured into fashion. My prompt was “The best fashion era was…” and the system came back with this mournful poem:
Poem on lost fashion, by an AI. Source: TalkToTransformer.com.
The whole poem wasn’t captured in the screen shot, so I will continue it here:
The power of
fashion has become
upstoppable.
The power of
fashion has become
upstoppable.
The power of
fashion has become
upstoppable.
The power of
fashion has become
upstoppable.
This is the power of
fashion.
The power of
fashion has become
unworld.
But that world is already gone.
The power of
fashion has become
unworld.
“This is where we live now. But that world is already gone.”
Coming up with that poetic wisdom seemed to fry the AI’s mind a little, because after that, a prompt like “Simple lines,” just summoned up stories about Ukrainian political scandals.
“Ornamentation in clothing” brought up this classic advice:
AI response to “ornamentation in clothing,” from TalkToTransformer.com.
Yes, don’t forget “children are often worn with hats or gloves,” and if you wear a sleeve, don’t take it off for other people’s enjoyment!!!
Author Kelsey Piper’s description sums it up — “If nothing else, GPT-2 is hard to beat for surrealism; it often feels like it’s reporting from an alternate universe that works sort of like ours but is … just a little off.”
Finally, I put in a sample of my own writing, to see if the system could replicate me:
Ah yes, the perfect design for the 6-block, removeable-4-sided quilt, about to be used by thousands!! And described with a lovely spelling mistake, so you think “you’e’re” looking at something typed by a human.
Generally I observed that the GPT-2 system cannot tell one craft material from another. Terms and techniques from knitting, beading, quilting, and ceramics were all used pretty much interchangeably, often in the same paragraph. So I think there is still a small niche for all of us arts-and-crafts writers in the Blogosphere.
But if you’re looking to generate some ideas or a new slant on a topic, you might like to play around with TalkToTransformer.com, and see what you come up with!
The Power of Fashion poem is strangely prophetic, I think. One of these days, the earth will have changed and fashion will no longer have the same power… But let’s never ask an AI to write the instructions for a quilt pattern!
Oh! That would be hilarious. “Take some blocks and switch them around, and then switch them around again, and then use wool of china to bead them in place, and it is so easy! And amazing!” 🙂
Well, exactly! You have the vernacular down pat 🙂
This is hilarious! Thanks for sharing!
It is so much fun to play with! I hope you have a chance to try it.
Good Grief! You are correct…….there is a place for YOU!!
So far… 🙂
Now I know where all that art speak has been coming from – AI!
That would explain a lot.
You find the most interesting tidbits to write about! This is a hoot and also reassuring–so far, we still write better than machines do!
I loved seeing the different formats the system employed — news articles, product reviews, poems. Definitely good as a thought-sparker even if it’s not quite there yet as a real writer.
I think I just figured out my spam comments — there’s a strange resemblance!
Yes, some of those spam comments manage to touch on every subject in a college catalog. I always wonder how they think they are going to trick anybody into interacting with them.
How funny! I’m sure the comment above is right. I get spam comments like these too. Good to know there’s still a place for us humans 🙂
Yes, I have always wanted to do a post in the style of the spam comments. Someday!
Well, THAT was highly entertaining! The common form of this AI, where my phone tries to guess my words when texting, can be entertaining as well. But mostly it is annoying. I don’t think we’ll be replaced by AI any time soon.
That would be a great post in itself! Somehow my phone never guesses that I am going to write “handwoven” or “batting” or “tussah silk!” 🙂