PG has had several posts about AI art today.
Now, let’s look at AI writing. Rytr may be the best-known of the AI writing tools. One of its pluses is a claim/commitment that it will be free forever, which is a refreshing change from the zillion little iPhone apps that want to charge a monthly fee for being a one-trick pony.
Rytr is based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 API, an open-source machine learning project.
Here is the first paragraph from an article on The Economist.
Declinism, that dull fear of Britain’s sunset, has shaped the country’s post-war politics. It propelled Harold Macmillan’s wish to enter the European Economic Community, the eu’s precursor, and fuelled Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution. And now it has helped Liz Truss into Downing Street. On September 5th Ms Truss was declared the winner of the ballot of 172,000 Conservative members to replace Boris Johnson as the Tory leader; tomorrow, she will fly to Balmoral Castle, Queen Elizabeth’s remote Scottish home, where she will be invited to form a government.
PG selected Blog Section Writing as the use case for Rytr. He selected Convincing as the tone.
Here are the Section Topic key words PG pulled out of the original Economist article to feed to Rytr: declinism, Britain EU Liz Truss Downing Street Conservative “she is cheerful” “I don’t agree with this declinist talk” Tory
Here are the Section key words PG provided to Rytr: Conservative, Britain, Tory, declinist
Note that PG didn’t paste the entire first paragraph into Rytr.
Here’s the Rytr paragraph in Copyrighting Framework Style:
Conservative MP Liz Truss has said that the “declinist talk” that is being spoken about in Britain is not something she agrees with. She says that Britain has a bright future ahead of them and there is no need to be pessimistic. Liz Truss, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has said in an interview with Sky News that she doesn’t agree with “declinist talk”. She says that Britain has a bright future ahead of them and there is no need to be pessimistic. Declinism, or declinist talk, refers to the idea that Britain’s global influence will decline in the future. It can also refer to people who believe this idea. , or talk it up.
To PG’s eyes, a few further tweaks and a correction to Ms. Truss’ office would make this better. However, he was impressed to see that Rytr evidently looked online and found the source of “declinist talk” as originating in a Sky News interview.
Next, PG changed the settings to Rytr to a different use case. Rytr asked for fewer input parameters than it had for Blog Section Writing.
Second Set of Rytr Settings:
Use Case: Email
Tone: Cautionary
Two Variants
Creativity Level: Max
Key Points: Conservative MP Liz Truss has said that the “declinist talk” that is being spoken about in Britain is not something she agrees with. She says that Britain has a bright future ahead of them and there is no need to be pessimistic. (These are the first 228 characters of the Blog Section Writing output PG obtained above.)
Here’s what Rytr produced from that input and set of parameters:
Subject: Future of UK?
Hi Geraldine,
Mood of the country seems to be in doubt with some professionals expressing their worry. But one thing that the huge majority can agree on is that Britain has a bright future ahead of them!
Conservative MP Liz Truss weigh in on this matter. She says that the “declinist talk” being encouraged by some should not be accepted at face value. The atmosphere she created and expressed was optimistic and celebratory of the future looking bright and full of possibilities with “no need to be pessimistic.”
That being said, we at {product name} want you to enjoy all the perks we offer. To learn what some customers have said about us, visit us for testim
—
Subject: England has a bright future
Hi {recipient name},
England has a bright future ahead with opportunities that other countries will envy. Trades Secretary, Kirsty Williams is optimistic when she says “despite Britain’s reputation as a weak, lackadaisical country, there are huge strengths in the economy”.
PG accidentally hit the Ryter button a second time with the same settings and the program provided two more emails on the topic:
Subject: Brexit talk frustrates MP Truss
Dear Editor,
I’d like to voice some positivity about the United Kingdom for a change: Conservative MP Liz Truss has denounced the idea these British have lost faith in its future. In fact, she went as far as to say that Britain has a bright future ahead of them. The idea of ‘’Britain being in some kind of post-Brexit declinist apocalypse is not something that I agree with,” she said.
Therefore, with this positive outlook and her comments urging Britons not to be reactive, we all know that the United Kingdom can proudly show off both what it has achieved and what is yet to come. Her points demonstrate hope for
—
Subject: Britain should be optimistic
Dear Member,
Conservative MP Liz Truss has said that the “declinist talk” that is being spoken about in Britain is not something she agrees with. She says that Britain has a bright future ahead of them and there is no need to be pessimistic.
Commenting on BBC Radio 4s Today Programme, Truss also praised Prime Minister Theresa Mays leadership skills, saying: “She’s an incredible communicator and negotiator–probably the best I’ve seen in my time in politics”.
Rather than dismissing or delving into negativity, consider the opportunities for growth, investment and new start-ups. Look to formulate strategies for longterm growth of your business operation. Be positive
This is the deepest dive PG has made into Rytr and he is rather impressed. He could imagine picking various of the Rytr paragraphs, tweaking them a bit and ending up with something useful.
For someone working as a “content creator” all day, PG imagines the Rytr could provide a lot of help in cranking out the words. He doesn’t think Rytr is going to produce the great American (or English or Canadian or Australian, etc.) novel in its current state, but it’s an open-source program, which means many programmers will continue to tweak and improve the program.
Just ran into this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/09/05/xboxs-matt-booty-asked-microsoft-to-invent-ai-bot-qa-testers-for-games/
Context:
1- Bug and feature testing of new software has always been tedious and slow. A real drag on meeting release schedules and lately, with video games getting bigger and more complex internally, a lot of comanies are finding that their games break in ways their testing dept didn’t find.
2- Game testing is often carried out by contractors rather than full time employees because they’re not needed until late in the development process. This is particularly true of smaller game studios but even larger studios look to minimize costs on testing because it isn’t “creative” like the artists, animators, writers, designers, and coders.
So obviously, Mr Booty, head of game development at XBOX, dreams of using AI (one of Microsoft growth areas) to both do more thorough and cheaper testing to produce better games on time within budget. Who could argue with that?
Well…
MS is in the process of buying ACTIVISION for $67B, which is something of a bargain because Activision top management has been involved in a fair amount of drama over the last year. And among the most visible drama has been that the testing unit at one of their studios (in Wisconsin) has been griping about workloads, hours, and pay and recently unioninzed. The first unit in any software company to unionize.
Microsoft is non-union but it also offers the highest salaries in the business but talking of automating testing has the activists up in arms. Shocking, right? 😐
Expect to see more of this in other industries as busineses adopt software tools to enhance human productivity. (And make up for skilled labor shortages as boomers exit stage left.)
If the BPHs weren’t allergic to tech they would be first in line looking for “AI” driven proofing, blurb writing, summarizing for marketing, and even sludge pile sifting. But they are and they won’t. Their loss. 😐
Basically, “AI” mongers focusing on creative writing, aspiring to replace writers are missing the low hanging fruit of the analysis market, which is what that kind of software does best right now. They are leaving money on tbe table.
After all, while all writers wouldn’t like an honest, private analysis/critique of their work (adjusted by genre and intent) quite a few would happily pay a modest “reading fee”. Imposter syndrome market.