A friend of mine is studying AI.
He is doing the course for his job and at one stage asked if he could use one of my manuscripts for an assignment. At least, that’s what he tells me. I don’t recall. The thing is, he used an unpublished manuscript I asked him to read because part of the plot is based on our shared real life experiences.
I was uneasy at first when he showed me how AI reimagined my work for a movie script, as many of my works have been used without permission to teach artificial intelligence how to write. Then he assured me that this AI is enclosed within his educational institution’s servers and is not connected to the outside world.
I breathed a little easier.
This assignment required my friend to create a detailed pitch for a movie producer, using a book as source material.
The AI not only turned my manuscript into a film script (which I haven’t read yet), but created a few images from the story while also suggesting major scenes for human illustrators to recreate.
Let’s start with the human created images. They were a delight. It allowed me to see how this work could be a graphic novel, and even thinking about this now, the idea appeals to me.
But at certain stages the AI got the story wrong, so the illustrator’s images were wrong. In one chapter, sixty-six year old Dorothy visits her downstairs neighbour with a cake she has just baked. In the human illustrator’s image, Dorothy is a little girl. Another picture shows a straight couple smooching. In the story it is two gay men who kiss.
The illustrators also created several versions of my characters.
Apparently, you need to present a film producer with alternatives so they can choose which version of your characters to cast.
The human illustrators drew variations of Dorothy and her husband Frank. These characters are in a failed marriage and I became fascinated with the different re-imaginings of Frank. In one picture he is thin, bearded, depressed, but attractive. When I wrote him I thought of him as chubby, clean shaven, sad and undesirable, and the illustrators drew several Franks this way.
But if a movie was made, the attractive Frank could work. His expression in the image perfectly reflects his state of mind more so than in the other pictures.
Now, let’s talk about the AI generated images.
Although the story is set in 2008, the AI decided that Dorothy, Frank, and their apartment should have a 1950s aesthetic, while the young gay men downstairs feel more 1970s.
In one scene, Dorothy uses a fan to cool down the cake she just baked. AI created six images of her doing this. Various 1950s looks were given to both her and her kitchen (including the fan). One has her clutching her fists, venting frustration, eager to cool down the cake to deliver it. This authentically captures her inner emotions.
But two other elements of the story confused the AI.
There is a fantasy scene which the artificial intelligence thought was a hallucination brought on by Frank smoking drugs. It created various images of him puffing away with colourful psychedelic patterns in the haze. Frank isn’t into drugs. No one has a drug problem in this novel. And the fantasy sequence is brought on for an entirely different reason.
The fantasy scene features the three younger gay characters. One of them is named Jagger, so the AI created this image substituting my Jagger for Mick Jagger.
As the author of this work, this was a unique experience.
On the plus side, I saw my work reinterpreted, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. The human created illustrations opened my mind to seeing how this story could work as a graphic novel, or as a Hollywood production.
But my writing group also provides the same sort of re-imagining. Plus, they helped me develop this work in its correct genre and period.
kevin klehr 