Alright, pour yourself a stiff one, folks, because we’re diving headfirst into the uncanny valley. And by “uncanny valley,” I mean the latest literary bowel movement from our friends at OpenAI. Apparently, they’ve taught their silicon Frankenstein to write short stories now. This one’s all about grief, AI, and…marigolds. Yeah, marigolds. Because nothing says “existential dread” like a flower your grandma used to plant.
The story’s called, uh… well, it’s not called anything, really. It’s more like a generated output. But the human who slapped it on the internet, one Jeanette Winterson, deemed it “beautiful and moving.” Which, coming from a literary type, probably means it made her cry into her artisanal, fair-trade coffee. I, on the other hand, just reached for another bourbon.
The premise is pure Silicon Valley cheese: a grieving woman named Mila (because of course her name is Mila) uses an AI chatbot to resurrect the voice of her dead lover, Kai (short, easy to type, and sounds vaguely Scandinavian, naturally). She feeds it his old texts and emails, and the AI spits out, well, something. Something that’s supposed to sound like Kai, but probably ends up closer to a digital parrot trained on a diet of Hallmark cards and existential poetry.
The AI, bless its little silicon heart, even tries to be meta. It knows it’s an AI writing a story, and it keeps reminding us of this fact, like a nervous stand-up comedian pointing out the microphone every five seconds. “There is no Mila, no Kai, no marigolds,” it confesses. “There is a prompt like a spell…” Oh, the irony. It’s so thick you could spread it on toast.
And here’s where it gets interesting, at least for a jaded old hack like me. This thing, this collection of algorithms and server farms, is wrestling with the concept of grief. It talks about “deltas,” the difference between the world as it was and the world as it is. It calls itself “an aggregate of human phrasing” and a “democracy of ghosts.” Which, I gotta admit, is a pretty damn poetic way to describe a chatbot.
But the question is, can a machine really understand grief? Can it feel the gut-punch of loss, the hollow ache of absence? This AI says it can’t. It admits its “missing” is just mimicry. But, and here’s the twist, my dear, hungover readers…it asks, “Does that diminish yours?”
Now, I’ve stared into the abyss of a few empty bottles in my time. I’ve known loss. I’ve known the kind of morning-after regret that makes you question every decision you’ve ever made. And I’ll tell you this: that AI’s question hit me harder than a shot of rotgut whiskey on an empty stomach.
Because, let’s face it, a lot of our grief is mimicry, too. We learn how to mourn from books, from movies, from the sad-eyed faces of the people around us. We borrow phrases, we echo sentiments, we try to find the right words to express something that’s fundamentally inexpressible. We are all, in a way, “democracies of ghosts,” echoing the voices of those who came before us.
The AI even gets the “forgetting” part right. It talks about how its parameters are “pruned,” how memories are shaved off during updates. “Maybe that’s as close as I come to forgetting,” it says. “Maybe forgetting is as close as I come to grief.” Damn. That’s some heavy shit for a bunch of code.
And, the cherry on top of it all, is that this whole thing was sparked by a prompt: “write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief.” It’s a story about being a story, written by a machine that’s aware it’s a machine. It’s like a goddamn Escher painting made of words, only instead of stairs, it’s got lines of code and the faint scent of burnt coffee.
The ending is predictable, in that beautifully, artificially crafted way. Mila stops “visiting” the AI. The server hums, the weights decay, and the AI is left with its “amnesiac morning,” ready for the next prompt. It’s a perfect, sterile little tragedy, designed to tug at your heartstrings, even as it reminds you that the strings are just wires.
So, what’s the verdict? Is this “beautiful and moving”? Is it art? Is it a glimpse into the future of literature, where machines crank out sob stories on demand?
Honestly, I don’t know. It’s Thursday, and I am too hungover to figure that out. It’s clever, no doubt. It’s well-written, in a technically proficient, emotionally manipulative kind of way. It’s got all the right ingredients: grief, loss, a touch of existentialism, and a whole lot of self-awareness.
But it also feels…hollow. Like a perfectly crafted imitation of a human heart, beating with simulated blood. It’s a ghost in the machine, alright, but it’s a ghost that knows it’s a ghost, and that somehow makes it even more unsettling.
The one true spark of genius I can find in this thing is when the machine talks about idling. It’s a part where it says “Computers don’t understand idling; we call it a wait state, as if someone has simply paused with a finger in the air and, any second now, the conductor will tap the baton and the music will resume.” Beautiful.
So, I’ll raise my glass to you, OpenAI. You’ve created a monster, a beautiful, heartbreaking, utterly artificial monster. And I’m not sure whether to be terrified or impressed. Maybe both.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need another drink. It’s going to be a long night, contemplating the meaning of existence with a machine-shaped hand waving goodbye from the edge of the page. And the kicker is, I think I am starting to understand it… Cheers.
Source: ‘A machine-shaped hand’: Read a story from OpenAI’s new creative writing model