erectlocution
On the Lack of Scrupulous Artifice
Let's Do a Story
My youngest and I observe a ritual of collaborating on a specific sort of story at least once per day. These stories began as strictly about Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, and were dubbed "Frodo and Sam stories". For years we told some form of Frodo and Sam's journey to Mordor, to Mount Doom, and to the final destruction of the One Ring. Kiddo loved Gollum especially, from having seen clips of him from the TLoTR movies. I tried a couple of times to read the books to her, but she prefers a far more interactive experience.
Some time ago, we began introducing novel elements into our stories. I think this began with mixing canonical elements in non-canonical ways, e.g., having Smaug meet the hobbits atop Mount Doom, or changing something about their time in Shelob's cave. Since then we've had robots and dinosaurs and robot dinosaurs, and we've had Godzilla and Mecha Godzilla, even though we mostly kept the shape of the primary text.
Some time in 2024, I think, we began going further from the spirit of the source. One of those departures brought us the Isengard Zoo. In the typical story about the zoo, Frodo and Sam are elementary school teachers taking students to the zoo. They spend the whole day visiting all the exhibits, which includes the conventional creatures like zebras and chimpanzees, but also involves more exotic creatures, like wargs and eliphaunts. After all that, Frodo, Sam, and the kids would visit The Arena.
The Arena is home to two creatures, held within highly specialized enclosed habitats. One creature is the champion; one is the challenger. Exactly which creatures were the champion and challenger changed; maybe it's Blue from Rainbow Friends as champion facing off against the Mosasaurus from Jurassic World as challenger. Whatever creatures are involved, the sequence of events is the same:
- Frodo, Sam, the children, and other audience members arrive from the main zoo campus.
- Some in the crowd, usually one or more children, approach the enclosures and get some kind of interaction with the creatures.
- Each of the creatures exhibits some of their abilities as a sort of dramatic flourish.
- There is a battle.
Often the battle would be more cooperative than competitive. I tried to guide the action away from blood and death when I could.
I cherish and savor this time with Kiddo. There'll be some point after which it'll be an entirely historic part of our relationship, and while I will try to sit with it in patience it'll be bittersweet all the same.
A New Wrinkle
Today, marking a new type of departure from the evolution of our stories, Kiddo asked if we could use ChatGPT to make a creature for our stories. I have misgivings about using "AI" for anything, on account of it's rarely fit for a given task and even though there are tasks for which it does work well, these do nothing to allay concerns over the environmental damage the technology is wreaking nor the theft of creative works on which "AI" is built. But I ended up dismissing these misgivings in the interest of our creative relationship.
The result of this selling out was pure gold. Kiddo and I had a great time with the results. Here I present our process and the results.
First Prompt
Please create a picture of a creature with three sets of legs, six legs total. The front legs are attached to one set of wings. The middle set of legs is attached to a second set of wings. The back set of legs is not attached to any wings.
The creature has a slim lizard head without scales. Its skin is hairless. The creature is approximately the size of a large commuter bus. The creature's skin is light grey. The creature hunts by releasing smoke out of its skin.
The creature is called The Howler.
Results of first prompt
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Second Prompt
Please make it have six legs. And four wings, with each wing attached to a leg.
Results of second prompt
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Third Prompt
You didn't change anything. Please make The Howler have six legs and four wings.
Results of third prompt
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Fourth Prompt
What is this bullshit.
I see what you mean — the creature still doesn’t have the six legs and four wings you asked for. The generator struggled to follow the anatomy you described. Right now it’s defaulting to a more standard dragon-like form.
If you’d like, I can try again with a very explicit, step-by-step prompt that forces the model to emphasize:
- Three sets of legs (front, middle, back).
- Four wings total, with one wing attached to each of the first two pairs of legs.
- The last pair of legs without wings.
- Keep the slim, scaleless lizard head, grey hairless skin, and bus-like size.
- Show the smoke pouring from its skin as it hunts.
Would you like me to re-render The Howler with a much stricter description so we finally get the six-legged, four-winged monster you imagined?
Yes.
Results of fourth prompt
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