 |
A brief addendum to the recent post on The Magpie. |
The Authors' Guild was one of the first bodies to bring a class action lawsuit. On my side of the border, J.B. MacKinnon has filed class action lawsuits against Meta, Anthropic, and Databricks, and Nvidia.
More power to him.
I've yet to encounter a single writer who isn't angered at having been exploited so, which is why a study released earlier this month, 'A.I. and the Professional Writer,' surprised. A survey of 1190 "writing professionals," it found that more than sixty percent were using AI on a weekly basis.
This writing professional stayed away until this month after leafing through Douglas Durkin's 1925 novel The Magpie. I'd failed to find an exchange that I was certain had taken place during a Winnipeg dinner party.
We've all been there. You remember reading something in a book, you even remember that it was in the top-half of a right-hand page, and yet still it proves elusive.
Then, with 'A.I. and the Professional Writer' in mind, I thought of asking ChatGPT. The study found that it is preferred by four out of five writers, making it the Trident gum of the profession.
Let's see ChatGPT prove itself.
Because The Magpie is in the public domain I felt only a little guilty.
The response:
- What ChatGPT refers to as the "opening dinner-party [sic]" takes place in Chapter IV, not Chapter I.
- Miss Frawley is not in attendance.
- The Great War is a topic of conversation, as one might expect at a social gathering that takes place eight months after the Armistice, but "Craig Forrester's return from it" is not.
- Nowhere in the novel is Jeannette Bawden described as speaking "in her cool voice."
- "Tell us, Mr Forrester, said Jeannette, "what does it feel like—to kill a man?" is not in the text, nor does is sound like anything she might say.
I did not challenge ChatGPT on these points - which I kind of regret - instead deciding to go with the flow.
Sensing fraud, I began asking more basic questions, the first being the meaning of the title.
Chapter I again.
The earliest of dinner party in the novel takes place in Chapter IV. Vicky Howard first appears in Chapter VI. To this point, she and Craig had never met, and yet the passage presented suggests great familiarity.
The conversation quoted appears nowhere in The Magpie.
In the actual novel, Craig Forrester is known as "The Magpie" only to a close-knit group of fellow traders working the floor of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. No one outside the building knows of the nickname.
Following this exchange, I asked a question about war widow Jeannette Bawden, my favourite character. A woman of the upper-middle class, she embraces social change following the death of her husband in the Great War. I could not remember whether she had ever considered violence as an answer, and so I asked:
Sensing fraud, I began asking more basic questions, the first being the meaning of the title.
Chapter I again.
The earliest of dinner party in the novel takes place in Chapter IV. Vicky Howard first appears in Chapter VI. To this point, she and Craig had never met, and yet the passage presented suggests great familiarity.
The conversation quoted appears nowhere in The Magpie.
In the actual novel, Craig Forrester is known as "The Magpie" only to a close-knit group of fellow traders working the floor of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. No one outside the building knows of the nickname.
Following this exchange, I asked a question about war widow Jeannette Bawden, my favourite character. A woman of the upper-middle class, she embraces social change following the death of her husband in the Great War. I could not remember whether she had ever considered violence as an answer, and so I asked:
Nothing even remotely similar to this appears in The Magpie. The words attributed to Jeannette and Craig run counter the characters Durkin created.
May as well add that the novel is divided into three sections, all of which consist of six chapters. There is no Chapter VII.
The most interesting of these exchanges concern Millie Dyer and her husband Jimmy, a labourer who had served with Craig overseas. The Dyers are unique in being the only working class family in the novel, yet were at first not recognized by ChatGPT.
This curious kink was revealed when I asked for a complete list of the novel's female characters. In response, ChatGPT provided an impressive list which included figures that appeared so fleetingly that they didn't even have names.
This curious kink was revealed when I asked for a complete list of the novel's female characters. In response, ChatGPT provided an impressive list which included figures that appeared so fleetingly that they didn't even have names.
But Millie Dyer was absent.
It was only when I questioned ChatGPT that she was acknowledged.
The same can be said about Jimmy.
In our back and forth, ChatGPT informed that no character dies during the course of the novel. It's true that Jeannette Bawden's husband is killed in the backstory, but Jimmy Dyer survives the conflict and very much alive in July 1919 when Craig spots him on a Winnipeg street and offers him a ride home.
Again, I challenged ChatGPT. There was no acknowledgement of the error, but I was offered this:
Again, I challenged ChatGPT. There was no acknowledgement of the error, but I was offered this:
In the novel, Craig learns of Jimmy Dyer's death months after it occurred. The man had died quite suddenly, but not by suicide. Widow Millie believes the tragedy was brought on by exposure to mustard gas in the war. Need it be said that the quote from the novel is a fabrication? There is, of course, no Chapter XIII.
Aware that my free use of ChatGPT was approaching its limit, I posed three more questions, the first having to do with Jeannette Bawden living with a veteran named Amer. ChatGPT insisted that this doesn't occur.
The second question had to do with the scene in which Craig confronts Marion about her infidelity. It's the last in which they are together. ChatGPT provides a made-up dialogue that appears to reference the death of Jimmy Dyer, all the while referencing Faded Page.
As pulp fiction goes, it ain't half bad.
Before signing off, I asked a simple question: "What was the name of Douglas Durkin's first wife?"
Douglas Durkin's first wife was Estella. Her maiden name was Thomson.
Addendum to addendum: After writing the above, I thought to ask ChatGPT the very same question I'd posed eleven days earlier:
The response, detailed and lengthy, begins:
Further section headings include:
- How Mrs. Loines knows Craig
- Who is Mr. Loines?
- How both parents fit into Craig's early reentry into civilian life
- Hilda's role at the table
- After-dinner atmosphere
A character sketch of Hilda Loines is also provided.
ChatGPT offered even more!
There is no Loines family in the novel.
Related post:
No comments:
Post a Comment