Why Chat GPT is The Ultimate Seductress

And how sympathetic resonance can protect artists

My mom used to make me read the dictionary. “Isn’t that grass so verdant?” she would say. I’d roll my eyes, knowing I’d be rewarded with sweets if I defined verdant for her (I have never once heard a muggle use that word, by the way. It’s some Slytherin lingo, I swear). Now I’m immeasurably grateful she made me memorize MapQuest routes and refused to let me Google synonyms in my writing.

Though I could have easily slipped on a banana peel and become an elitist asshole, it still created a sense of self-reliance with my own imagination.

I’ll be honest: I too have been tempted by our favorite robot servant, chat GPT.

I described the Siren Court to a friend of mine in full detail. Minutes later, she sent me an AI-generated image of the court. I smiled brightly seeing the visual in my mind pulled into reality. I made an account for the first time (late to the party, I know) and plugged in the descriptions of Lemuria.

It was a slippery slope. When I felt stuck, rather than struggling through my story, I was tempted to bounce ideas off Chat GPT.

The more I outsource answers, the more my internal capabilities atrophy.

Sure, Siri can route me better than a map, and I will never come close to a calculator, but perfection and speed are not the point.

Is Chat GPT a better writer than me? Of course. It is a compilation of the greatest writers who ever existed. Being the best is not my aim. I would love to improve and grow in my craft, but I would rather create an imperfect manuscript from my own experience and imagination than an impressive Great American Novel ghostwritten by a robot.

I want to get lost in a book written by someone whose life experience is different from my own. I want to read poetry from a person who has turned devastation into beauty. I want to be pierced by a song that places me in the cavern of someone’s heart. I want to stare at a painting that helps me look at life in a new way. Experiencing art from humans who are different than us creates this wonderful bridge of understanding. Maybe we don’t know what it is like to be them, but suddenly there is a window where there was once only a wall.

And isn’t that the greatest gift of art? The way it reminds us what it means to be human.

I have experienced firsthand the way completing a book changed me. I have experienced firsthand the confidence and resilience that came from seeing a story through—from surviving the disorientation of praise and criticism and sitting my ass back down to just write.

I have four books published. I used to cringe at their mistakes. Recently, I have begun to smile at them. When I am ninety years old, I think it’s really wonderful and important that you will be able to see the progress made from nineteen until I take my final bow, so to speak.

I’m not demonizing AI. The technology is so new, and the boundaries are so blurred for us artists that we each have to draw our own lines on what crosses over creative integrity.

Photo: Indigo Unveiled

People feel the place we create from.

Poetry has shown me that. I’ve performed the same poems one hundred times in one hundred ways. There were moments when I was trying to sound melodic or slip into my best spoken-word drawl, and no one gave two shits. The audience was an ocean of blank stares. Then there were other times when my heart was open, when I dared to entirely reveal myself—to not perform when I’m performing. Those are the times that I have witnessed an emotional chord being struck in people.

So here’s my theory on why I never tweak when someone says, “BUT WHAT IF A ROBOT STEALS YOUR JOB?”

It’s a musical phenomenon called sympathetic resonance. If you pluck an E string on a guitar across a room, it can cause another instrument, like a violin that also has an E string, to vibrate at the same time.

We all have our own stories that are personal and unique to us. And yet, the human experience is universal. If I am creating art in an honest way, then the audience is likely going to feel the strings of their own heart vibrate.

More importantly: storytelling is fun. I only have so much time on earth, and I don’t need a grander reason than that.

Xx,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Scribe