Hemingway Was Right (and ChatGPT Can Help)
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Hemingway Was Right (and ChatGPT Can Help)
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TRANSCRIPT
Hi everybody and welcome back to the wonderful world of Everything is a Remix. I'm gonna try some new things. I'm experimenting. I don't know what I'm doing or where this is going.
I know I told some of you I'm retiring from video, I stopped the kinds of videos I was making. It's a new game for me, this is a new chapter. I'm going to be doing things in a way.
I want to tell you about an exciting new project I have and share one of the best parts of it right here.
I have a new course about ChatGPT and AI. You can watch the entire first module, which is 7 videos, over 25 minutes of content, for FREE. There's a link in the description.
AI is the next frontier in creativity. And the best tool there is... is ChatGPT.
What for? For writing and for writing content.
ChatGPT helps you deal with this.
The blank page. The void. The abyss. That relentless blinking cursor.
You can get spooked here. When you're starting from nothing, it's easy to get overwhelmed with choices or overthink or procrastinate.
Remember what I'm about to say. Make a note. Screencap.
Rewriting is easier than writing. I'll say it again: rewriting is easier than writing.
ChatGPT gives you something to work with. It's not good necessarily, it's just... something. It's a start.
Some of you might be thinking: doesn't your first draft need to be kinda like... good?
No no no. No, it really doesn't. Common misconception.
Don't believe me?
How about the author Jane Smiley? She won the Pulitzer Prize. She said.
"Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist."
How about Anne Lamott? She wrote a famous book about writing called Bird by Bird.
"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere."
Or most famously, Earnest Hemingway might have said "The first draft of anything is s--t."
We're not totally quite sure he said exactly that.
The first draft is often bad. Just like the first demo of a song is bad or the alpha version of your software is bad or the first prototype of your product is bad.
Thinking that the first draft has to be good will paralyze you. It'll stop you from starting.
ChatGPT can get you that crappy first draft, it can give you the raw material. Then you have to rewrite it pretty much completely. There won't be much ChatGPT left in it when you're done.
Sound like a lot of work? It's way less work than writing your own first draft and then making that better.
I'll say it again, rewriting is easier than writing.
When there is something there on the page, you can improve it and fix it.
And sure, sometimes ChatGPT will strike out. No matter what you do, its first draft will be a dud, you won't be able to use it. Was that a waste of time?
No, you still come out ahead. Because seeing what you don't want can shed light on what you do want. It's helped you narrow down the possibilities.
In sports, there's the expression "You're either winning or you're learning." Same applies here. Even when you lose with an attempt at a first draft, you learn, and you get closer to a solution.
How AI Remixes the Human Imagination
AI is the new frontier of creative work. And remixing is deeply ingrained in generative AI software like ChatGPT and DALL-E.
All generative AI is trained on the infinite library of creative expression that is the internet. When AI “creates,” it is remixing. It copied loads of human work, then it transforms and combines this data to create new works.
The technology of AI itself is remixing human creative work.
But we also remix when we use AI.
When we write with AI, we can take our words and transform them into someone else’s style.
For instance, I can take the first paragraph of this post and have ChatGPT turn it into a children’s song. Here’s the first verse.
AI's a new frontier, so vast and bright,
A world where ideas take flight.
In the land of ChatGPT and DALL-E's art,
Creative journeys are about to start!
When we create images with AI, we cite styles and artists and remix them.
The image below was created by DALL-E using the prompt “create an image of the easter bunny rendered in a renaissance painting style.” To the right you can see its clearest influence, The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci.
So how do you get started with AI creativity? Download our free toolkit, 11 Incredible Ways to Work With Al, to get started!
AI and The Shock of the New
Nick Cave screams into the void
“The Shock of the New” is culture’s allergic reaction to new art forms. It’s an attempt to kill off the invader.
Whether it’s hip hop or comic books or the blues or video games, or movies or TV or fan art or even novels, these were all considered “not art.” They were lower, inferior, and contemptible forms, not capable of conveying the insight, humanity, and emotional breadth of real art.
This doesn’t just happen with art, it happened with the internet, cars, trains, factories, or electric lights. Anything that was once new – which is everything – was subjected to the shock of the new and targeted for defeat or elimination.
This is happening now with AI.
These attacks come from many different angles, but I want to focus on my domain: creativity and art.
In this realm, the singer-songwriter Nick Cave has been one of the most persuasive and eloquent critics of AI as a creative tool. Cave wrote an influential and ferociously critical letter about ChatGPT. Cave’s words have resonated widely in the months since he wrote it. (If you don’t like reading, you can watch Stephen Fry read the letter here.)
Cave argues that writing song lyrics with ChatGPT is “participating in [the] erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself.”
Holy shit guys!
Nick Cave certainly has wisdom to share about the value of art and how it enriches your life. But he doesn’t have wisdom about ChatGPT, and c’mon, has he ever used this stuff? Judging by his level of revulsion, which is extreme, I’d guess he’s probably never typed a single prompt.
I’m not a great artist like Nick Cave, but I am artistic and I have used ChatGPT for creative tasks. Anybody who has done the same knows this: ChatGPT is bad at art.
If you want bad lyrics, ChatGPT can write those. And y’know, for most pop music, bad lyrics are good enough, so let’s start there.
Yeah, you got that yummy, yum, That yummy, yum, That yummy, yummy
Bad lyrics are good enough
Cave thinks songwriting with the assistance of ChatGPT is not songwriting. Here’s a bit from his letter where he addresses a songwriter who uses ChatGPT for lyrics because it’s quicker and easier.
That ‘songwriter‘ you were talking to … should fucking desist if he wants to continue calling himself a songwriter.
Cave thinks the lyrics of songs are of paramount importance. But lots of musicians and fans do not share this opinion.
Cave makes serious music with serious lyrics. But most people don’t wanna hear that shit. Of all the millions of songs being streamed right now, almost all of that music has stupid lyrics.
Here’s some of Justin Bieber’s famously stupid “Yummy.”
Yeah, you got that yummy, yum
That yummy, yum
That yummy, yummy
It goes on like that.
That song has 770 million views on one platform. It certainly has over a billion listens in total.
Pop music is mostly stupid. You and I and Nick Cave might not like that kind of music, but most people do. They want catchy songs they can sing along with and the lyrics are often unimportant.
If pop artists want to quickly write stupid lyrics with ChatGPT rather than dash them off themselves, I’m sure we’ll all be fine.
But stupid lyrics aren’t just for stupid artists. Lots of great musicians don’t care much about lyrics and toss them together at the last moment.
Mumble mumble mumble
Good music has stupid lyrics too
Plenty of great artists don’t necessarily value lyrics and sang meaningless strings of words.
David Bowie sometimes wrote jibberish lyrics. “Life on Mars” sure is a great song, right? Ever listened to the lyrics? No, you haven’t, but here’s a bit of what’s actually said.
It’s on America’s tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
’Cause Lennon’s on sale again
Michael Stipe’s early lyrics with REM were entirely jibberish and maybe not even words at all. Here’s a bit of “Radio Free Europe” (whatever that means).
Keep me out of country and the word
Deal the porch is leading us absurd
Push that, push that, push that to the hull
That this isn’t nothing at all
Plenty of Nirvana’s lyrics were written by Kurt Cobain moments before recording. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” starts like this.
Load up on guns, bring your friends
It’s fun to lose and to pretend
She’s over-bored and self-assured
Oh no, I know a dirty word
Again, bet you never knew most of what was being said there.
Cave would certainly not dismiss David Bowie, Michael Stipe, and Kurt Cobain as “not songwriters” and yet they tossed together lyrics like they were scribbling homework minutes before class.
The most important part of music is, y’know, the music. And inane or banal lyrics can be compelling in the right musical context.
Is prompting ChatGPT less creative than stringing together rhyming syllables? Perhaps it is if you just cut and paste ChatGPT responses, but I’m gonna argue that many songwriters probably won’t be doing that.
William Burrough’s famous novel Naked Lunch was sliced together from existing texts
ChatGPT is useful for good art
One of Cave’s major themes is that ChatGPT undermines artistic struggle.
ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning. It rejects that there is a collective, essential and unconscious human spirit underpinning our existence, connecting us all through our mutual striving.
I suspect Cave is imagining someone prompting ChatGPT for lyrics, cutting and pasting whatever it spits out and presto.
This is not the reality of creating something good with ChatGPT. This entails lots of editing, rewriting, and writing. ChatGPT is a powerful tool, but it is extremely dependent on the orchestration of a living person, with a heart and a soul. The creative struggle is still very much real if you want to write good lyrics.
The best ChatGPT can do is create fragments that a creative person can isolate, then copy, transform, and combine those bits and others into something good.
There is, of course, a rich history of artists thinking like this.
The writer William Burroughs popularized “The Cut-up Technique” in the sixties. He used to cut out bits of text and string ’em together. Bowie, Cobain and Thom Yorke all did the same thing for lyrics.
I made a documentary series about how this technique applies not only to words, but to music, film, technology, science, and ideas. Everything is a Remix, folks.
Music listeners aren’t idiots
One of the weaknesses of the artistic mindset can be insularity. Put more bluntly: your head is stuck up your ass. Sitting by yourself and composing your great thoughts often means you’re pretty into yourself. I’m speaking from experience here.
Cave is guilty of this in his letter. He’s thinking of his own struggle and striving, but he’s not thinking of his partner in the dance, the listener.
I’ve spent thousands of hours of my life as a listener. The listener is seeking connection with another soul and insight into themselves and into life.
Only extraordinary experiences can do this. If good art is easy and common, then good art is worthless. If everybody can spit out great lyrics with ChatGPT, nobody will be paying attention. The truly great work will have to be even better – or at least different.
Great art gets attention because it is extraordinary. This doesn’t mean it’s better, it just has something unusual. If ChatGPT starts writing good lyrics, the differentiator for good lyrics will move elsewhere, and great artists will still struggle to create this extraordinary work.
There just has to be an apocalypse
Steeped in Biblical narratives as he is, Cave’s vision just has to culminate in a Book of Revelation-style apocalypse. He can’t just say that ChatGPT sucks and you suck if you use it.
ChatGPT has to be “[eroding] the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself” and “just as we would fight any existential evil, we should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world.”
Holy shit Part Two!
Here’s my guess about what’s coming: culture is more resilient than people think. We’ll all adapt, the shock of the new will fade away, and life just goes on. The whole panic gets forgotten and then gets repeated for The Next New Thing.
Art created with AI is not yet good. But it will be. And it won’t happen because AI is that much better, it’ll be because brilliant people find a way.
The Creative Apocalypse is Not Near
Image generated with Midjourney; type added by me
We are now about a year and a half into the age of generative AI. There was a lot of fear and anxiety heading into this era. I want to take a moment to assess what the reality of working with this software has been like, from a creative perspective.
Long story short: working with AI is a lot more work than everybody imagined.
Let's start with text.
The major theme of my course about creating content with ChatGPT is that you need to lead. You need to be creative and problem-solve to work around the serious limitations of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT writes generic, dull text, and it's hard for us to read more than a few paragraphs of this stuff without our eyes glazing over. The onus is on you to make that text work.
ChatGPT is a powerful and very worthwhile tool, but the area where it will have the most impact is gruntwork, the boring work you don't wanna do. Actual creative work? It can't do that.
Image generation is even more limited.
Image from The Polar Express, a film riddled with the uncanny valley effect
Much like there's the "uncanny valley" effect in CGI, AI-generated images feel empty and uninvolving. You can see one of these images at the top of this post. It’s fine for this modest purpose, but for higher-level work, it would seem "temp," like a placeholder. (It also looks like countless other images being pumped out all over the internet.)
But haven't I been using image generation? Yes, I've been experimenting and demonstrating what this software does. But, as I said in my course, I don't think image generation is ready for prime time yet. If AI art is going to work for you, it's your own creativity that will do the heavy lifting.
Text and image generation gives you raw ingredients, much more raw than what you would get from a human collaborator. And it takes a lot of imagination in your preparation to make these ingredients flavorful.
When is it okay to use AI art?
AI-generated images sold on Adobe Stock that were inadvertently used by Wacom. Yeah, it’s complicated.
This week several companies found themselves on the wrong side of the internet pitchforks. Posts like this went viral on X.
The AI image generation controversy in a nutshell is this: all image generators were trained on human art. This was done without permission (except Adobe’s Firefly, which used Adobe’s stock library and public domain images). Artists feel that their labor has been exploited in service of replacing them.
(Text generation, like ChatGPT, is much less controversial, although not entirely so.)
As you can see in the examples above, artists spotted these uses of AI imagery. AI art has telltale quirks that identify it as AI-made. If you use AI art publicly, people will know.
If you want to use AI art but you also want to do the right thing, what are you supposed to do?
In my opinion, AI image generation is ethical in these circumstances.
If you do extensive editing, compositing, and other transformations
This is my most important point in favor of AI: if you take AI art, then copy, transform, and combine it into your own creation, that art becomes yours. It’s no longer an AI creation, it’s a human creation. For instance, this clip from Fabdream wasn’t just spit out by an AI. This artist worked hard to create this.
You’re a hobbyist
If you use AI art non-commercially and for fun, that’s fine. Just like using uncleared music samples in free music you give away is fine.
AI art is not the final product
If you use AI imagery as a step within your process, like for storyboards or prototypes, that seems fine. Just like an illustrator can use another person’s illustration temporarily during the creation process.
You’re in AI
If you work in AI or are a member of that community, using AI creations is probably fine because your role is to develop and experiment with these tools. For instance, I used AI art in my new course about creating content with AI.
Remember, even if you’ve been conscientious, if use AI art publicly, you might get negative attention.
When is it not okay to use AI art?
You’re a business
This is the big one. It is primarily businesses that hire artists or license imagery. That means a human artist potentially doesn’t paid if you opt for AI art. AI imagery is simply not worth the negative attention or the meager cost savings. Stock imagery is cheap, plentiful, fast, and high quality. If you’re in a business or run one, just steer clear of AI art. (Again, unless AI is your business.)
You’re in the art community
If you’re in the traditional art community, using AI art will likely offend lots of your peers.
Here are the main things to consider.
Am I displacing a human artist?
Could I have hired an artist or licensed stock instead?
If the answer is yes, it might be best to hire someone or license stock.
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My Journey With ChatGPT
This is a free chapter from my new course, Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024.
To see the whole course, click the link above!
Transcript
I'd like to tell you about my journey with ChatGPT.
When I first saw generative AI — so text generators like GPT as well as image generators like Dall-e, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. When I saw these and tried them I had two contradictory feelings.
Firstly, I was blown away that software could do this. Floored. The most stunned I've been by technology. This software was doing stuff I thought only people could do.
Secondly, for doing actual work, it seemed more awesome than useful. I didn't know really what to do with any of this stuff. I used programs like Photoshop and Final Cut Pro early. After you tried those, there was no confusion about what you would do with this software. You would do your work, just better and faster.
AI seemed awesome and historic, but it didn't click for me, I didn't really get what to do with it.
Anyway, I started using it for kind of minor, support tasks. It was saving me some time, but nothing amazing. But unexpectedly, it grew from there, I kept coming back to AI, in particular to ChatGPT, that became the big one. Image generation, which I will cover in this course, I still think is not yet that useful – at least for me right now.
Why did ChatGPT's role in my work expand?
One of the main reasons was I found ways to work around its limitations, which spotted very quickly when I started using it.
But also I found new ways to use it.
In particular, I made seven discoveries. I found seven incredibly useful things that ChatGPT does. Any one of these justifies using ChatGPT. But there are seven of them. I mean, this software is a big deal. The hype is excessive, but I think those people are closer to being right than the people who are dismissive of this technology.
These seven discoveries I have dubbed The Magnificent Seven. And they are the foundation of this course. There is of course, even more than that here, but these are the game-changers.
So if ChatGPT didn't click for you in the past, for doing real work, you didn't get it, you were like what I do with this B-minus grade text, I'm gonna show you what to do with it.
That was my journey with AI. I went from impressed but not a user, to an impressed user. This journey is still ongoing. It continues to grow for me and AI continues to get better and better and integrated into more and more different kinds of software. Everything is gonna have AI features. I mean it, everything. So it is high time to get on this train, it's still early. We're just getting rolling now.
Up next, I'm going to reveal The Magnificent Seven, the seven AI discoveries I made that changed the game for me.
I present them in ascending order, we're starting at the bottom, each of these is a bigger deal than the last.
The first video is an overview, the second is a walkthrough where I show you how to do real work.
Let's get to it.
Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024 is an on-demand video course about crafting content with ChatGPT and AI. Whether you’re a “content creator” or someone who needs to create content as part of your job, this course will dramatically raise your AI game… fast.
When should you use ChatGPT in your writing? And how much should you use it?
What are the writing tasks that ChatGPT excels at? What are the tasks it’s weak at? And how much can you use it for each?
There are plenty of writing tasks where ChatGPT can save you precious time. But there are also plenty of writing tasks where it can cost you time. It’ll take longer to rewrite and edit ChatGPT’s outputs than just writing the piece yourself.
What are the writing tasks that ChatGPT excels at? What are the tasks it’s weak at? And how much can you use it for each?
The Three Tiers of Writing
What is your writing task? Place that task in one of these three tiers: low-level, mid-level, and high-level. I’ll explain each.
LOW-LEVEL
This is writing that just needs to do its job. It doesn’t need to withstand much scrutiny from the reader because it will get skimmed. Whether it’s “good” or “bad” is determined by whether or not it did its job. You’re not composing beautiful prose here. Some examples: most social media posts, FAQs, terms of service for your site, or summaries of existing text.
MID-LEVEL
This is quality content that should engage your audience more, but it’s not the best you can do. This is valuable content, but it’s not headline material. It’s your content for this week, and you’ll need more next week. You’re probably not going to promote this content for months. Some examples: an article or blog post, a social media thread, or a landing page.
HIGH-LEVEL
This is the best writing you can do. These are big ideas and big swings. This content requires excellent writing and storytelling. It might demand research, analysis, or creativity. You’ll continue to promote or sell this content for months or years. This is your prestige stuff, the centerpiece of your written work. Some examples: a book, video, presentation, product copy, or important articles.
Get the idea? Choose the tier for your task. Is it low-level, mid-level, or high-level?
How much can you use ChatGPT?
The tier you just chose is ChatGPT’s grade for that level of writing. In other words, ChatGPT is excellent at A Tier, good at B Tier, and decent at C Tier. You’ll use ChatGPT less the lower the tier you place it in.
With A Tier, you can use plenty of what ChatGPT gives you verbatim. (But as always, be sure to proof those outputs and edit them.)
With B Tier, ChatGPT will primarily give you raw material that you’ll rewrite. It’ll also give you some usable text.
With C Tier, ChatGPT becomes a support player, a bit like a combination of Google and a human copy editor. ChatGPT can give you information and edit your writing, but most of the work gets done by you. This is ChatGPT at its least revolutionary.
Beware of C Tier
C Tier is where ChatGPT can waste your time. You can end up typing endless prompts as you search for decent outputs or entirely rewriting and rethinking what ChatGPT gives you.
To determine if your task belongs in C Tier, ask yourself the following three questions. If the answer is “yes” to any of them, it is.
Is this a long piece of writing? (Even over a few hundred words is long.)
Is this a complex piece of writing? (Does it have a narrative? Does it have a personal perspective? Is it intended to evoke emotion?)
Is this a very important piece of writing? (Is it very important to you, your audience, or your business?)
Again, ask yourself: is this long, complex or very important?
An important note: ChatGPT is still very useful for supporting C Tier writing.
You need lots of low- and mid-level writing to market and publicize your premiere content. It’ll need social media posts, articles, product pages, summaries, etc. ChatGPT can help you do a lot of that work quickly.
Some of you might be wondering why you should use ChatGPT less and less as the writing task becomes more and more important. It’s simple: ChatGPT writes mediocre text that tends to be bland. In small doses, this works just fine. The text will be repetitive, rambling, and dull in larger doses. If you use ChatGPT where it’s not suited, you’ll just post text nobody will read.
The quality of ChatGPT’s writing might change, but that’s where we are now.
The Take-Away
ChatGPT can do most of the work for low-level writing, a good amount for mid-level, and valuable support work for high-level. You’ll use ChatGPT less frequently the higher you rank your project in these tiers. But for most of you, C Tier writing is a minority of your day, so there are a lot of tasks where ChatGPT can save you some time and spare you some tedium.
As always, be sure to verify any fact ChatGPT gives you. You’re responsible for what you publish, not ChatGPT.
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This lean and efficient guide will show how to get real writing done with ChatGPT. I do actual work, and I show you how I did it. There’s no hype and no BS. Read more about it here.
New guide to writing with ChatGPT
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Why artists shouldn’t fear AI
“The AI hype inferno is raging out of control right now, and these narratives are just as often utopian as they are dystopian. I’m going to heave a few much-needed buckets of water on this wildfire.”
Read my latest article, “Why Artists Shouldn’t Fear AI.” This is a expansion and elaboration of Part 4 of Everything is a Remix, Artificial Creativity.
My swan song, Artificial Creativity
I am enormously proud to present Everything is a Remix Part 4: Artificial Creativity. I’m very happy with how this video turned out and I hope you all enjoy it.
As some of you know, this is my last video. I’ll update you all shortly on what this means. Let me just say for now, I will still be pursuing interesting topics, I’ll just be doing it in a different way. Again, update coming in a bit.