Bloopers & News 8/13/23

Hemingway's "Green Eggs and Ham"

I see so much AI news every day that I find it hard to choose what to share with you. This week the story that piqued my interest the most was that Sarah Silverman is suing Open AI and Meta for copyright infringement, alleging that the companies trained their AI models with her book Bedwetter without her permission (two books by other authors are also involved in the suit.)

You may recall that in chapter three of my graphic novel the future version of me has a job searching for copyright infringement, so of course this story caught my eye.

The first time I used ChatGPT (in June) I asked it to “Write Green Eggs and Ham in the style of Ernest Hemingway,” and here is what it produced:

I do not like green eggs and ham. 
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

These peculiar eggs, they are not for me. 
I seek simpler pleasures, as you can see. 
In cafes and bars, I find my delight, 
Amidst the chatter, the drink, and the night.

I long for grace and effortless prose, 
To sip on absinthe, where genius flows. 
Green eggs and ham, they fail to enthrall, 
For my taste, they are not meant at all.

Pretty good, right? At the moment we can read this as a lark, a bit of satire. We’re probably not too worried about copyright infringement of Hemingway or Dr. Seuss.

But what about when a Hollywood studio feeds all of Aaron Sorkin’s work into AI and asks it to create a new TV show in the same style? When Aaron Sorkin sees characters he didn’t write walking down a hallway and bantering in his signature style will he have any recourse or rights? Will it matter if he can prove they used his original material since one can’t copyright style?

I could read every book written by John Steinbeck, cite him as my inspiration, and then set out to write a book in his style. That doesn’t mean I’ll ever write anything as good as John Steinbeck, and it certainly doesn’t mean his estate can sue me for trying.

But that’s different than feeding a computer a book by John Steinbeck (or Sarah Silverman) and then saying, “Using these sentences and style, create something as close to this as you can.” Isn’t it?

AI is very much at the heart of the current writer’s strike. An article in Fortune explains “All sides in the strikes acknowledge that use of the technology even more broadly is inevitable. That’s why all are looking now to establish legal and creative control.”

I heard from a second-hand source that the WGA is looking for a guarantee of six writers in a room for a TV series, which is currently quite reasonable. But if a studio can pay two human writers to come up with a concept, write out the main beats of a script, and then have AI do the rest, why wouldn’t they? They might pretend they are in the business of making art, but they are in the business of making money.

And how long will they even need those two human writers? Will they hold out in this strike long enough for AI to do ALL the writing? Hollywood notoriously loves “new” ideas that are exactly like ideas that have already been successful: “Bring me a new young adult property that is completely fresh and exciting but is exactly the same as Harry Potter.”

The studios all want a sure thing. In many ways, feeding sure things into AI is a dream come true.

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Nailed It - Outtakes of the week

I’m keeping a diary of what happens when I give Dall-E this prompt: a drawing in graphic novel style of the author Carolyn Cohagan. I may not be as famous as Hemingway but there are plenty of images of me on the web.

A picture of me that pops up with a Google search.

However, here is what Dall-E came up with (it seems very determined to make me blonde).

This last one seems older than me and has little resemblance to my face but actually seems like to have a haircut I once had and a shirt I would wear?

I added long wavy red hair into the description and it decided to give me blue rimmed eyes. Sure, Dall-E. You do you.

This is my favorite, which looks like me after giving up carbs for a week.

I also wanted to share the versions of “joy” that Dall-E came up with. To be fair, I asked it for a “joyful acid trip.”

The first one seems like a bunch of happy zombies about to eat the one guy on the left with hair.

This looks like happy vampires about to eat the purple guy on the right.

This is Frankenstein giving me the peace sign with three fingers, because his creator accidentally gave him six.

This straight up looks like evil elves about to eat my face. Who is happy or joyous here?

And after all those monsters, this next one looks like stoned Owen Wilson giving me a high five. I suppose that would be . . . kind of nice? Fine. If I had to choose between Owen Wilson and ravenous vampires/zombies/elves I would say stoned Owen Wilson is pretty joyous.

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