serizawa3000

I feel a little like this is the literary equivalent of eating a Twinkie instead of a granola bar.

Copilot is ubiquitous with assorted Microsoft things, but it can be switched off, so there's that.

But, oh... um. In spite of EVERYTHING, I did NOT turn off Copilot, O Best Beloved. Out of the desire to satisfy some sort of curiosity, I typed something into the prompt and clicked "Send". Just like I used to do with Craiyon, trying to get the program to create images of Godzilla playing chess with Robby the Robot, or Tank Girl as Richard Corben might have drawn her, or... whatever.

Anyway. I typed, I clicked "Send", and... Word eventually regurgitated a three-page story at me. And it wasn't completely awful. I mean, there were some choices I wouldn't have made, like the name of the POV character, or the flavor of ice cream, but there were bits that might even be of use.

Maybe that's what was so saddening about it. One of the tricks of writing is making it look effortless. Remembering one person's declaration of how "I wrote this on the flight from New York to L.A." Sure, I popped out a novel in a month MANY years ago, but still. I was in something like literary Goblin Mode, trying to write garbage.

I'd once heard the news of how some software programmer came up with a computer program that could "write" in the style of a particular author. Jacqueline Susann. That was over THIRTY years ago.

And now we have Chatbots and... Copilot...

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a sheet of blank paper to stare at...