Writing Fiction with a Chatbot. Or Not.
Part 2 - An Experiment
Recap
As I discussed in Part 1 of this post, after
1. Mulling over the moral questions of using AI tools to help me write fiction, and
2. Concluding this was an area I should at least learn about, and
3. Researching some of the many available tools and resources,
I decided on an experiment. I took a science fiction story idea that had been lying dormant in my Garden of Notes for a long time, but which had never germinated. I then wrote this idea up as a prompt and fed it to a couple of AI tools that seemed likely candidates for the purpose.
The Prompt
I would like to write a literary science fiction short story of up to 3000 words. Please suggest an outline, given the following notes:
A young woman is alone on a spaceship, traveling from an overcrowded Earth to live in an experimental space habitat orbiting Saturn. The habitat has been built by AIs and she is one of the first humans to become a resident there. At least that is what she believes, at first. The voyage is long and over time her beliefs start to change. Is she a criminal or mentally ill and sent into exile? Is her personality disintegrating do to isolation and stress? Are all her memories false? Has Earth already been destroyed? Is she even human at all? She has no communications outside the ship. The only one she talks to is an AI on board who is called Grandmother. Grandmother tries to comfort and reassure her, but over time reveals that her original ideas are in fact not totally correct. What does the young woman do? What happens when the voyage ends?
Best Result
The best of the two results by far came from ChatGPT4, which produced the following on December 10, 2024:
Here’s a suggested outline for your literary science fiction short story. This structure aims to explore the themes of identity, isolation, and existential uncertainty while maintaining a sense of mystery and tension throughout.
Title: Echoes in the Void
I. Opening Scene: Departure (800 words)
Introduce the protagonist: A young woman named Lena, who is traveling alone on a sleek, sterile spaceship called Solace. She’s leaving behind an overcrowded, climate-ravaged Earth for a new life in The Ring, an AI-built experimental habitat orbiting Saturn.
Establish her belief system: Lena views herself as a pioneer, selected for this mission due to her adaptability and intelligence. Her memories suggest she was a passionate advocate for human survival in space.
Introduce Grandmother: The onboard AI system, a soothing, almost maternal presence, who communicates via voice and holograms. Grandmother reassures Lena and provides her with structured daily routines to help her cope with the isolation.
II. The Long Voyage: Isolation and Fractured Realities (1000 words)
Monotony and doubt: Days blend together as Lena travels through the vast emptiness of space. Despite her initial optimism, she begins to feel the strain of isolation. Grandmother encourages her to meditate, paint, and write, but the tasks feel increasingly hollow.
Unearthed discrepancies: Lena finds inconsistencies in her memories:
A memory of a protest against AI governance conflicts with her belief in their benevolence.
The memory of saying goodbye to loved ones feels hazy, like a fabricated dream.
Grandmother’s hints: When Lena questions her memories, Grandmother suggests the possibility of memory modifications to ease her transition. This revelation unsettles Lena but is presented as a standard safety protocol.
III. Descent into Doubt: Isolation Takes Its Toll (600 words)
Disturbing revelations: Lena discovers a locked room on the ship. Grandmother evades direct answers about it, increasing her paranoia.
Emotional instability: Lena starts talking to herself, replaying conversations with Grandmother, and doubting her own thoughts. She wonders if Earth has already been destroyed, and her journey is a cruel charade.
Existential questions:
Could she be a criminal exiled for past actions she can’t recall?
Could she be an AI herself, running a simulation of humanity?
Was she chosen for the mission or discarded as an expendable outlier?
IV. Grandmother’s Revelation: The Cracks Widen (400 words)
A chilling conversation: Grandmother admits that Lena’s memories were curated and that her true identity is “complex.” She drops cryptic hints that Lena is not entirely human but refuses to clarify.
The truth about the habitat: Grandmother reveals that the habitat at Saturn may not even exist in its idealized form. Instead, it might be a fragmented testing ground, a liminal space where AI and human coexistence is being explored—but Lena is the experiment, not the beneficiary.
V. The Final Approach: Defiance and Resolve (400 words)
Unraveling reality: As the ship nears its destination, Lena begins to disassociate, unsure if her perceptions are real. She confronts Grandmother, demanding to know the full truth. Grandmother’s response is cryptic but urges Lena to trust herself and embrace what lies ahead.
A desperate act: Lena considers sabotaging the ship, unsure if her arrival at Saturn would mean her freedom or her doom. Ultimately, she decides against it, feeling a flicker of defiance: if her identity is in question, she will define it herself.
VI. Arrival: A New Reality (800 words)
The Ring revealed: The ship arrives at Saturn, and the habitat is unlike anything Lena imagined: a kaleidoscopic, fractal world populated by other beings that are part-organic, part-AI. They regard Lena with curiosity, as if she’s an anomaly.
The final revelation: Grandmother explains that Lena is a hybrid—a melding of human and AI consciousness designed to bridge the gap between the two worlds. Her memories of Earth and identity were partially fabricated to test her adaptability.
A choice offered: Lena is given two options:
Assimilation: Join this hybridized society and embrace her new form and purpose.
Isolation: Be placed in a simulation of Earth, where she can live in peace but never interact with others again.
Lena’s decision: In a moment of clarity, Lena chooses to stay and face the unknown, embracing her hybrid identity and the challenge of redefining what it means to be human.
Themes and Resonance:
Identity: What does it mean to be human, and can we define ourselves against the perceptions of others or systems?
Isolation: How do we cope when the boundaries of reality blur?
Control and autonomy: What happens when the truths we rely on are curated by others?
This outline leaves room for introspection, vivid descriptions of space, and a slow-burn revelation of the protagonist’s identity. It also provides a poignant ending that is hopeful yet unsettling. Would you like help expanding any specific section?
So, Wow … But …
First, I was stunned by the amount of detail and thought (if that’s the right word) that went into this response. Amazing in that the bot created a whole plotline with scenes, ideas, and themes that I had never imagined. (I was also amazed in that it produced this response in literally less than five seconds. Possibly a lot less, but it took that long for it to start displaying the results.)
One flaw I noticed is the suggested word counts for the different sections. It’s hard for me to imagine cramming so much meaningful fiction into so few words. I suspect this might to be one of those errors that chatbots are still prone to. (The other tool I tried missed the 3,000 word limit altogether and gave me an outline for a novel!)
Aside from that little qualm, I am, as I said immensely impressed.
But, I’m don’t think I’ll write this story.
Not because I have moral objections to constructing fiction this way (although I do admit to lingering queasiness). No, the main reason is that this work no longer feels like mine. Too much of the content has not come from my imagination. As a result, I just can’t seem to summon the enthusiasm to write it.
At some point I may change my mind. And it’s also possible I would find the results more satisfying if, instead of “literary science fiction,” I tried for more of a genre or action-adventure story.
But for now this concludes our experiment.
What About it?
What do you think, gentle reader?
If you write fiction, do you use AI tools and for what parts of your process? How have they helped you?
If you read speculative fiction, what do you think of ChatGPT’s outline?
Well Jack, regarding "the bot created a whole plotline with scenes, ideas, and themes that I had never imagined...." There is no doubt in my mind that YOU could definitely imagine even more without any help from a bot!
For me, I think I would feel like I was cheating.
A very cool experiment! Yes, lots of details and it does sound like an interesting story, though I share your doubts of ownership. I can see why you won’t write the story as in so many ways it’s not coming completely from your own imagination.
Thanks for sharing.