The tidal wave of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-generated essays, bios, ads, and short stories has begun. Everyone wants to watch the newborn AI create something from a smattering of words, and the wave is washing through Amazon, with hundreds of new books written or co-written by AI listed in February. It smashed Neil Clark’s Clarksworld Magazine, with AI-generated stories submerging his submission channel. He refuses to explain how he can spot them (he doesn’t want them), except to say, “there are some very obvious patterns.”

What patterns? I’ve read some of the AI-created essays and stories and am curious about ChatGPT’s sentences. Does it have a preferred style? A preferred syntax? Does it know how to invoke rhythm and sound? Does it use metaphors, similes, and personification? Can it write stunning sentences that are alive and effervescent on the page?

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said on Twitter, “writing a really great prompt for a chatbot is an amazingly high leverage skill and an early example of programming in a little bit of natural language.”  

I admit prompt writing is not in my skill set, so keep that in mind as you read this AI-generated story. Moreover, this is only one sample. And while AI-generated work has included many prompts that define the writing style (write like Virginia Woolf), I’m going to let AI choose its own style.  

Prompt: Write a short story about a woman named Flannery who smokes two cigarettes a day, drinks one glass of wine at night, and in her dresser drawer, her clothes are neatly folded, but she’s late to every meeting and experiences a sense of fundamental redundancy to her existence.

Flannery was a woman who lived her life by a strict routine. Every morning she would wake up at the same time, smoke two cigarettes, and drink her coffee while looking out of her window. She would then spend the day working, and every evening she would have a glass of wine and read a book. Her clothes were always neatly folded, and her apartment was immaculate. But despite her well-ordered life, Flannery couldn’t shake the feeling that her existence was fundamentally redundant.

Flannery’s routine was disrupted one day when she arrived late for a meeting at work. She had lost track of time, and by the time she arrived, everyone had already started without her. She felt a sense of shame and embarrassment that she had never experienced before. She realized that her strict routine had made her so focused on herself and her habits that she had lost touch with the world around her.

Over the next few days, Flannery began to notice small things that she had never paid attention to before. She noticed the way the sunlight shone through the trees in the park, the sound of birds singing in the morning, and the laughter of children playing in the streets. These small things brought her a sense of joy that she had never experienced before.

Flannery started to make small changes to her routine. She would take a different route to work, stop to talk to the people she met on the street, and try new foods at restaurants. She found that by breaking out of her routine, she was able to see the world in a new light.

One day, Flannery met a man who shared her love of literature. They started talking about their favorite books, and before long, they were lost in conversation. For the first time in a long time, Flannery felt a connection with someone. She realized that she had been so focused on her routine that she had forgotten about the importance of human connection.

As Flannery continued to break out of her routine and explore the world around her, she found that her sense of redundancy began to fade. She realized that life was about more than just following a strict routine, but about experiencing all the beauty and wonder that the world had to offer. She still smoked her two cigarettes a day and had her glass of wine at night, but now she did so with a new appreciation for the richness of life.

I was ready for a deluge of simple sentences, but the six paragraphs display surprising sentence variety, with a mix of complex and compound sentences. For instance, in the first paragraph, there is the complex sentence: “Every morning she would wake up at the same time, smoke two cigarettes, and drink her coffee while looking out of her window”; and the compound sentence: “Her clothes were always neatly folded, and her apartment was immaculate.”

Yet it doesn’t show much variety in terms of where to put the dependent clauses, most of which are after the base clause. The second paragraph has right-branching sentences exclusively, with the base clause at the beginning: “Flannery’s routine was disrupted one day when she arrived late for a meeting at work.” Over and over.

The third paragraph demonstrates parallelism: “She noticed the way the sunlight shone through the trees in the park, the sound of birds singing in the morning, and the laughter of children playing in the streets.” And again, in the fourth paragraph: “She would take a different route to work, stop to talk to the people she met on the street, and try new foods at restaurants.”

We can see that alliteration is within the AI’s repertoire of style techniques, with the repetition of sibilants in the third paragraph: she, sunlight, shone, sound, singing, streets. Later, in the fifth paragraph, love, literature. Assonance, too, is woven into its algorithm. In the third paragraph: noticed and shone; trees, singing, and streets.

It also uses plosives, which create a feeling of harshness, with its word choice: “strict routine.” In my prompt, I didn’t include the word “strict” or “immaculate.” The elimination of plosives creates a softer feeling, and at end of this six-paragraph story, Flannery has a “new appreciation for the richness of life,” a phrase devoid of plosives.

And it has heavier stresses, which slow the reader down: “She FOUND that BREAKing out of her rouTINE, she was Able to SEE the WORLD in a NEW LIGHT.” (Capitalized words are heavier stressed.)

But its diction is clunky, with its excessive use of “realized” and time (“lost track of time,” “and by the time”) and “strict routine.” It readily resorts to cliches (“track of time,” “see the world in a new light”). And it’s allergic to figurative language, though it did take the details of my prompt and associate it with the words “strict routine.” This is synecdoche, in which the whole is used to represent the parts.

In the past, systems AI language models were deterministic—given an input, they would always produce the same output. Today’s models no longer run by specified rules but probabilities and statistics, and are non-deterministic: given an input, it can exhibit different outcomes with different runs. According to AI experts, this opens up the possibility of what’s called artificial general intelligence: general human cognitive abilities that will exceed human capabilities because of its ability to process huge data sets at tremendous speed.

But we’re not there. So what it’s writing now is not intentional. The Flannery story is the product of AI ingesting huge amounts of data, searching for patterns, and generating text. To show these early signs of becoming a stylish writer means its input has been stylish human writing.

At the macro, bigger picture level, the story unfolds through exposition, and is dull and lifeless. For this column, I’m confining myself to its sentences, which show signs of life, but their pulse is weak, the music faint, barely there.

I wish I could say AI-generated stories will always be mediocre, but I can’t. Altman said in an interview with New York Times reporter Ezra Klein, that ChatGPT will be 10x better by the end of the year. How? In part by increasing the model size. ChatGPT-4, which was released March 14, 2023, can process 25,000 words, eight times more than the previous model. And by continuing to digest huge amounts of data. People testing it out helps it learn. Within five days of its release for public testing, in November 2022 it had 1 million users. By January 2023, it had 100 million. Each day, 13 million people use ChatGPT. The story it wrote about Flannery has helped it learn. Someday its sentences will be alive and shimmery because we are teaching it.

I’m writing a new story. Something about a velvet chair, how it goes missing and how my protagonist, Fran, wanders the city to find it. In the story, she meets so many people who have had things go missing: chairs, dogs, refrigerators, houses, people. There won’t be a neat ending because the things that go missing goes on forever. A malaise has settled over the creative types, Fran will sense. A feeling they’ve been fired and, jobless, they’re wandering a wasteland, bewildered, bereft. I’ll make sure to include in my byline, ‘human-made.’