Alexander Nachaj

ChatGPT – the internet’s favourite maniacal AI – can do some things sorta well, other things not so well, and for the rest… well, uncanny valley is a polite way of putting it.

Recently, I tried asking ChatGPT to write me Don Rickles jokes, and it basically trolled me.

So, because I’m a sucker for punishments, and apparently bad jokes, I decided to see what it would come up with when asked to write some a mix of sick and saccharine guitar tabs.

Let’s see how it fared!

First Attempt: Give me a folk song

I started simple:

Can you write out the tablature for a folk song?

It seemed like a basic premise, and since I’ve been playing my acoustic lately, I had a mild hope it would churn out something interesting or at least coherent.

In reply, it told me it was happy to oblige and provided me with what it referred to as the, erm, “tab” for Woodie Guthrie’s “This Land is You Land.”

Verse:
e|——–0——–0——–0——–0——–|
B|—–3——–3——–3——–3———–|
G|—-0——–0——–0——–0————|
D|———————————————|
A|–2——–2——–0——–0————–|
E|—————————–3——–3—–|

Chorus:
e|——–0——–0——–0——–0——–|
B|—–1——–1——–3——–3———–|
G|—-0——–0——–0——–0————|
D|———————————————|
A|–2——–2——–0——–0————–|
E|—————————–3——–3—–|

With even just a passing familiarity with the song, I knew this wasn’t it. It was something else – just some sort of arpeggio with a couple of weird variations of standard chords.

I mean, we got a G/B, a sort of G, something like looked like Am7 at first but is a version of Em7 and back to our weird sorta G.

More confusing was the explanation it tacked on at the end:

The song is divided into two sections: a verse and a chorus. Each section is represented by a separate block of tablature. The chord progression for both the verse and chorus is: G – D – Em – C – G.

This would have been helpful only the chords listed here were neither the chords in the tab it gave me, nor in the actual song.

I can only assume that ChatGPT decided to pull some random words out of its ass that sounded like a coherent explanation for how to play a song. Only it wasn’t the song it claimed, nor even the chords.

First try was definitely weird, but not too good.

Attempt Two: A New Folk Song

Since ChatGPT is good at making stuff up, I asked it to write a never before heard folk song.

Here’s what I got:

Verse:
e|——-3——–3——–3——–3——-|
B|—-0——–0——–0——–0———-|
G|——————————————-|
D|—–2——–2——–2——–2———-|
A|–3——–3——–0——–0————-|
E|————————–3——–3——-|

Chorus:
e|——-0——–0——–0——–0——-|
B|—-1——–1——–3——–3———-|
G|——————————————-|
D|—–2——–2——–2——–2———-|
A|–3——–3——–0——–0————-|
E|————————–3——–3——-|

Again, it spat out some weird chords – chords, that at first glance, look kinda normal but when you get closer there’s always a finger on an unusual string or an unexpected fret.

Picking at the notes was oddly discordant because you expect the first two chords to be C and then G only they are not.

Arguably better though, since it did indeed make up something new. Though, it hardly gets points for creativity because it’s pretty similar to the “Woodie Guthrie” it imagined.

However, it did give me another psychotic reading of these chords:

In this tablature, the chord progression for the verse is G – D – (rest) – Em – G – D – C – G, and the chord progression for the chorus is C – G – D – G. You can strum each chord once for every beat in the song (in this case, there are four beats per measure), or you can create your own strumming pattern to give the song more rhythm and character.

Okay sure. That makes sense with the tab.

Attempt Three: Onto Metal

Moving in another direction, I asked ChatGPT to write me a sick solo for a metal song.

Here’s what I got:

But if you can follow it, it’s basically a sort of running scales starting with the low E and working its way to the top and then back down again. Three times in a row.

Though it claims to be a metal song, even playing this fast with some chunk to it has it come out sounding like a dude practicing scales or some weird, boring nursery song.

It then added this little humdinger:

Of course, this is just one example of a metal guitar solo, and you can modify and adjust the notes and techniques to fit your own unique metal song. Happy shredding!

My oh my if that isn’t a teaser – spoken like a person who has a whole bundle of other metal solos up their sleeve they are just waiting to share.

Fourth Attempt: Give Me Power Metal

Honestly, I wasn’t too enthused about getting another solo out of it (I suspect I know what it will look like), so I asked it to give me some power metal chord progressions:

Sure! Here’s a sick chord progression for power metal in the key of E minor:

| Em | G | D | A | | C | D | Em | D |

This progression starts off with a classic power metal chord progression: Em – G – D – A. This progression is commonly used in power metal, and provides a strong foundation for the song.

The second half of the progression switches things up a bit, starting with a C chord and moving into a D chord before returning to Em. The use of the C chord adds some variety to the progression, while the return to Em provides a sense of resolution.

You can play around with the rhythm and strumming patterns to make this chord progression even more epic. Add in some fast arpeggios, palm-muted chugs, or soaring leads to really bring this progression to life. I hope this helps you create an awesome power metal song!

Honestly, it’s a decent chord progression, but not particularly sick. And spelled out like that, even with the call to add some “soaring leads” doesn’t really make this scream power metal.

Where are my power chords?!

Attempt Five: Give Me Power Chords

I demanded power chords for a power metal song about dragons. It obliged with this:

Verse:
E5 A5 C5 D5
e|—————————————-
B|—————————————-
G|—————————————-
D|—–2—–7—–10—-12—————
A|—–2—–7—–10—-12—————
E|—–0—–5——8—-10—————

Pre-Chorus:
C5 A5 D5
e|—————————————-
B|—————————————-
G|—————————————-
D|—–5—–7—–12———————
A|—–5—–7—–12———————
E|—–3—–5—–10———————

Chorus:
E5 D5 C5 A5
e|—————————————-
B|—————————————-
G|—————————————-
D|—–2—–12—-10—-7—————-
A|—–2—–12—-10—-7—————-
E|—–0—–10—-8—–5—————-

Bridge:
C5 D5 A5 E5
e|—————————————-
B|—————————————-
G|—————————————-
D|—–5——7——2——0————–
A|—–5——7——2——0————–
E|—–3——5——0——x————–

Outro:
E5 A5 C5 D5
e|—————————————-
B|—————————————-
G|—————————————-
D|—–2—–7—–10—-12—————
A|—–2—–7—–10—-12—————
E|—–0—–5——8—-10—————

Well, it gave me power chords, but this is hardly a groundbreaking tab.

Some basic rising and descending progressions, but no rhythm, no flair, no chonky use of that bass string.

Can’t I get at least one winning roll tonight?

Final Attempt: Write Me a Complete Song

This time I was pissed. It was go big or go home.

I asked it to write me a power metal song about Vikings and dragons and include the chords.

The results?

Intro:
Em C G D

Verse 1:
Em C
From the north they came,
G D
A fierce and mighty horde,
Em C
With swords and axes raised,
G D
To fight and conquer all.

Pre-Chorus:
C D
But little did they know,
Em G
That danger lay ahead,
C D
For in the land they sought to claim,
Em G
An ancient dragon bred.

Chorus:
Em C
Fire in its breath,
G D
Scales as hard as steel,
Em C
The Viking’s courage tested,
G D
As they battled with such zeal.

Verse 2:
Em C
The dragon struck with force,
G D
Its fury unrelenting,
Em C
But the Vikings stood their ground,
G D
Their determination unending.

Pre-Chorus:
C D
With every blow they struck,
Em G
The dragon howled in pain,
C D
Their swords and axes ringing true,
Em G
Their victory not in vain.

Chorus:
Em C
Fire in its breath,
G D
Scales as hard as steel,
Em C
The Viking’s courage tested,
G D
As they battled with such zeal.

Bridge:
G D
They fought and fought,
C G
Until the dragon fell,
G D
The Vikings cheered,
C G
Their victory they did tell.

Solo:
Em C G D x2

Chorus:
Em C
Fire in its breath,
G D
Scales as hard as steel,
Em C
The Viking’s courage tested,
G D
As they battled with such zeal.

Outro:
Em C G D

Honestly, as hilarious as the lyrics are (and honestly cute, look at how they rhyme!) it’s not all that much dumber than something, say, Sabaton might churn out on a given day (provided they were into writing songs like Rhapsody might).

Not sure if it’s gonna win any awards, but it is a song about Vikings and dragons and maybe if someone got creative they could make it into a power metal song. For the the time being, it could probably pass as a ballad, or maybe a B-side from a Leonard Nimoy album.

You’ve probably heard all about it.

ChatGPT is the latest machine learning bot that’s tearing up the internet (and apparently also passing exams at business schools).

It’s the latest piece of technology that people are going to want to ban, burn, or bury (and not entirely without good reason), but which – let’s face it – is not only likely here to stay, but actually become more prominent as the years go by.

So, with that mindset, I said “what the hell? Let’s give it a spin.”

Only, instead of using it to earn an MBA on the side I wondered what would happen if I asked a bot to try and tell me jokes.

ChatGPT – How Does it Work?

The bot is basically a chatbot.

When you boot it up from OpenAi’s website, you get what is basically a messenger system waiting for a prompt.

You’re then free tot type in whatever you want.

In my case, I started with this:

Tell me a joke that no one has ever heard before

And here’s what the bot gave me in return:

As a language model trained on a vast amount of text, it’s possible that some jokes I generate might have been heard before. But here’s one that might be new:

Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field!

Oof.

Well, the disclaimer wasn’t really needed. I knew I wasn’t talking to Don Rickles’ ghost here, but how about the joke itself?

Not exactly the most laugh out loud 1-2 out there, and certainly not entirely original either.

A quick Google search confirmed my feeling that I had heard that particular deadbeat, 1950s style joke before.

Forum, after forum, were filled with that setup and punchline.

A solid 1/5 rating. Yes, it was a joke, but no it wasn’t original.

Time for another try:

Make up a new joke

And its reply:

I’m sorry if my previous jokes were not to your liking. As an AI language model, I generate content based on patterns in the data I was trained on, which includes a large number of jokes, puns, and other humor. Here’s a joke that I generated just now, it’s not based on any existing material:

Why did the robot go to the bar? Because it wanted to oil up its circuits!

Well, that was actually surprising. Not the disclaimer, but the “joke.”

I’d certainly never heard it, and apparently neither had the internet. When I searched it, it turned up blank.

Points for originality. Only problem is, it looks like a joke, sounds like a joke, but is it a joke?

I mean, unless “oil up” is slang for “get shitfaced” it’s a bit flat. And not really funny, to be honest, not even in a dad-joke way.

Still – if it did write this without stealing something from a forum, that’s kind of impressive.

I suppose the alternative is that this joke is so bad that even the internet forgot it.

In any case, it also gave me hope that if I pressed it further, it might eventually write a better joke:

Tell me another original not based on existing material

The reply:

Certainly! Here’s another original joke that I generated just now:

Why did the math book look sad? Because it had too many problems!

Hold up.

I know the bot said it generated it just now, but that’s an old one too.

And yep, the internet confirmed I wasn’t crazy. It even found that one listed on a site listing dad jokes.

Dad jokes.

Well, there it is.

ChatGPT is a Dad Joke Generator

Realizing, I was going down a dark road into the kinds of jokes you overhear while camping in Ontario, it was time to switch gears.

This time I wanted it to conjure up Don Rickles’ ghost. If anyone could tell a mean stand-up joke, it was that old bastard:

Give me a joke like don rickles would tell

Perhaps to no one’s surprise, here was the reply:

Don Rickles was a legendary comedian known for his sharp wit and insult humor. Here’s a joke in the style of Don Rickles that I came up with:

Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide!

I hope this joke brings a smile to your face!

Well, gotta hand it to the bot for pulling a fast one on me like that. It sets it up like it’ll be the real deal, only to hit me with another savage dad joke.

Honestly, it’s possible Don Rickles told that joke – and if he did, he definitely sprinkled in a few “assholes” along the way.

But even then… not sure if the Wikipedia entry opening was his style either.

A little saddened by my failure of getting a good joke so far, I tried one final time.

It was time to double down.

give me a better one

I made my demand short and sweet. Time for it to take the kiddie gloves off.

The reply:

My apologies, let me try again. Here’s a joke in the style of Don Rickles that I generated:

Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field!

I hope this one is closer to the style of humor you were looking for!

Ah yes, the fabled Don Rickles joke about the award-winning scarecrow.

And worst – already recycling jokes five minutes into the set. Classic.

I guess in a way, ChatGPT is a little limited when it comes to original humour.

But maybe that’s the real joke here – having this dad joke chewing bot take me for a spin.

I hope someone is laughing at least.

I enjoy using Midjourney.

There’s the mindless time sink, where you roll out whatever nonsense comes into your head, as well as the more thoughtful moments of trying to churn out something kind of interesting and dazzling that could make a good wallpaper or backdrop.

Earlier this week, however, I wondered if I could use it to create something that wasn’t so spur of the moment. If it could help me illustrate something a bit more tangible.

I started wondering what would happen if I used it to try and generate portraits for the characters from my recently published cyberpunk crime novella Heist.

A few questions that came to mind were:

Would it be possible to create images similar to what I had in my head? Or would I end up only getting things that were wildly different?

And what about if I used snippets of text from the novella. Would that make it easier or would Midjourney have one of its classic misunderstandings and spit something hilarious out?

John Barker

Our antihero protagonist, Barker is something of a one time criminal mastermind who’s already a couple years past his prime. He’s experienced, practically fearless, but by the end of Act 1 of the novella, finds himself broke, grievously wounded, and likely betrayed.

The first difficulty in rendering him in Midjourney was actually the scant few scenes where I described what he looked like.

While the story was told over his shoulder, most of his appearance was fed in bits and pieces when it seemed relevant (and I did consciously try to avoid an info dump with him… can’t say I did the same with the others).

In this case, I typed up a prompt describing him as a sort of elevator pitch, and the result after a couple of rolls was honestly not far off the mark of how I imagined him looking and hopefully described him enough in the novella itself.

Meera Galatas-Sarwar

The first of our two femme fatales in the story. Meera is another antihero who has a tangled past with Barker and is now running a crew of her own (and much more successfully than our protagonist).

She approaches him at the end of Act 1 with an offer he can’t refuse, and helps take us off to the races as our crew puts together an impossible heist against the city’s top mega corporation.

In this case, I filled the prompt with a good chunk of her description when she first walks into the book and meets Barker (who’s hiding at a rundown Neo-Manichaean temple).

Midjourney has a tendency to do wonky things with people’s eyes, and if you look closely enough there’s a bit of that here, but overall not too far off.

In the story, she’s someone with questionable loyalties and allegiance, and I think our art bot did a decent job at giving her both a sense of allure as well as danger.

Eva Richter

Richter is our snarky, eager-to-piss-people-off corporate security agent. For much of the story, she’s a foil to Barker’s character and persona. Maybe by the end they come to somewhat trust, if not at least respect one another?

Okay, to be fair, calling her a femme fatale isn’t exactly accurate. She has some of the characteristics of the trope, but in this case she’s also a turncoat from the corporation who joins our crew in the heist.

Getting Midjourney to generate a good version of her was tough. The main issue was getting it to generate someone who looks like they’ve been around the block a few times.

Richter, after all, is also a disgruntled war veteran, so I wanted Midjourney to get me someone who didn’t quite look they were last year’s homecoming queen. Still, it took a few rolls.

Josef Lenczycki

“Joe” is an aging Neo-Manichaean adept who runs a run-down temple in the lower levels of the city. He takes Barker in after his run goes to shit and nurses him back to health.

The Neo-Manichaeans in these world are primarily a religious movement that’s focused on escaping the body and embracing the technological future. Many of their adherents are more machine than muscle, and Joe is no exception.

In this case, I used some of the direct description from the novella and it gave the bot some interesting things to work with. Here we have a man who’s not quite gone over to the other side, but has had no shortages of body modifications in the meantime.

I tried getting something like the above while also clothed in some old robes, but after a couple of tries I stuck with this image and moved on.

Marek

Our boy Marek here is the muscle of the crew. One of Meera’s people who carries something a chip on his shoulder, and acts like he has a grudge against Barker.

Pairing him up (or even putting him in the same room) with Barker doesn’t always go well. You can’t have cyberpunk crime noir without angry emotionless men sometimes getting into fights, after all.

Atwal

Meet the tech head of the crew.

As is apparent, she’s also the oldest of the bunch – and in a cyberpunk setting where people are obsessed with youth and beauty – the fact that she looks her age is itself some sort of near criminal rebellion.

Singh

A man of few words and a sort of classic gunslinger – albeit one who’s given a cybernetic eye and drug-enhanced reflexes.

For the first few rolls, I tried my hardest to get one of him with a cigarette (he’s perpetually hand-rolling his rigs – something the others find quaint and dated).

However, while Midjourney can do a lot of things, it can’t do people smoking cigarettes very well. The closest I got was something like a vapourizer, albeit with a tube stuck up his nose. That’s a post for another day.

Colburn Randall

The patriarch sitting at the top of the city’s mega corporation.

Colburn is the progenitor to dozens, if not hundreds of offspring – a man who is impossibly aged and using all his powers to prolong his life past what should have been its natural conclusion.

Through most of the story, he’s an elusive figure – more myth than embodied person – until a pivotal scene near the end that puts most of what happened up until that point into context.

He’s also another one that gave me a hard time.

Every time I described the character using passages from the novella, he came out looking like a grumpy, possibly alcoholic, ex-university professor sitting on a bench and waiting for the last train to the suburbs.

Not quite the figure I had in mind.

The best I could get was by really changing my descriptions. In the end, I got something pretty close – albeit with strangely metallic monster hands. Not sure where Midjourney pulled those from.

Gabriel Randall

Another from the Randall famo;y- Gabriel is the golden boy of the corporate can, and has an important connection to Barker’s past. Like most of his family (and even characters in the novella) he’s the type who lays plans into plans into plans.

This one actually got churned out with almost no alterations from the way he was described as looking in the novella.

Minakshi Randall

And lastly, to have a bit of fun, I generated someone who isn’t exactly a character in the novel, so much as fixture.

We’re talking about the overhyped goddess whose image is seen peeking out of holograms, plastered on old-style billboards, and who everyone obsesses over in the metaverse – Minakshi Randall, the consumer-facing element of the family whose purpose is to keep entertained and shopping, rather than doing literally anything else.

She’s one part-Kardashian, one part-Bollywood star, and possibly only exists in advertising. Describing he wasn’t difficult, and the images that Midjourney churned out were as aptly gonzo and over the top as I imagine most of the advertising in this world to be.

In Conclusion

Overall, I’m fairly happy with the results of my Midjourney experiment. Obviously, using a bot to generate character art isn’t as top tier as one would get from a professional artist.

In my case, I am neither a professional artist nor know any out in the wild. Until I do, having a tool where I can prompt out images based on some of my own descriptions from the novella has at least led to a pretty enjoyable afternoon of experimentation.