Put an image in, and get a story out. Mind blown.

*Update based on reader feedback: unfortunately it looks like I used to be mistaken about GPT-4’s current capabilities. While Open AI touted the image to text feature, it appears that evidently it isn’t currently available for users (although even the writers over at Scientific American consider it’s currently possible). What happened in the next story is that ChatGPT read my file name and interpreted that right into a story relatively than recognizing the image. This remains to be pretty impressive, in the event you ask me, although I feel bad in regards to the mistake and for writing something incorrect.

Considered one of the amazing recent abilities of GPT-4 is that it will possibly process images. When Open AI rolled the new edition out, they demonstrated how they were in a position to take a napkin with a sketch on it and have ChatGPT turn it into an internet site.

Cool.

It took me some time to determine the best way to use this as a fiction author, though. Actually, I totally ignored the feature. A minimum of, until I created the above space squid image for a Midjourney every day theme (learn more about Midjourney from their website). I liked the image so much but didn’t have much use for it.

And unexpectedly as I checked out this cool picture and considered how amazing it’s that I can just create images like this in a number of minutes with little or no skill or knowledge, I had a thought.

What would ChatGPT consider my space squid?

The prompt I used is below, followed by the actual story, word for word. I didn’t edit the output in any respect. I gave GPT-4 little or no instruction within the prompt because I desired to see what it will do, if left to its own devices.

The Prompts

giant space squid on the helm of an enormous, detailed high, definition space shuttle, detailed equipment, tentacles all over the place, asteroids out the window — v 5

I need to create a really short story that’s Lovecraftian and bizarre and lower than 1000 words around the next picture: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/945077390839787570/1088226597015912499/wanderwell_giant_space_squid_at_the_helm_of_a_massive_detailed__8ad0b924-d8fc-447f-879c-d8d6a962f53c.png

The Story, as Written by ChatGPT

Title: The Cosmic Leviathan

Within the distant reaches of uncharted space, a derelict spacecraft drifted, its once-gleaming hull pockmarked by time and celestial debris. Captain Alistair Halloway, a seasoned explorer, led his crew aboard the craft, hoping to unravel the mysteries shrouding its origins. The ship’s interior bore a striking resemblance to Earth’s Victorian architecture yet was adorned with cryptic symbols and machinery that defied human comprehension.

As they ventured deeper into the vessel, the air grew colder, laden with an eerie, otherworldly presence. Halloway’s pulse quickened after they entered a colossal chamber, its vastness dwarfing even the grandest cathedrals of Earth. The room was consumed by an abyssal darkness, save for a faint, pulsating light at its center. The team’s flashlights revealed an imposing contraption, a wedding of technology, and the arcane, which housed an enormous, spherical object.

Halloway stepped closer, his curiosity insatiable. The sphere emanated an ethereal glow, its surface shifting with incomprehensible patterns. As he gazed into the mesmerizing dance of sunshine, the captain’s mind was flooded with visions of an ancient, cosmic entity slumbering throughout the depths of the universe. The visions promised power and knowledge beyond human understanding but at a terrible cost.

The once-disciplined captain was now consumed by a maddening obsession to awaken the cosmic leviathan. He ordered his crew to steer the derelict ship towards the entity’s celestial lair, using the arcane machinery to navigate the treacherous cosmic currents. The crew, now under the spell of the sphere, worked tirelessly to meet their captain’s commands, their eyes glazed with blind devotion.

As they neared their destination, the celestial tapestry parted, revealing an abyssal maw that dwarfed even the most important stars. Tentacles of unimaginable size and grotesque form emerged from the void, their inky blackness adorned with nebulous patterns that mirrored the sphere’s hypnotic dance. The cosmic leviathan stirred from its slumber, its gaze fixed upon the insignificant vessel that dared disturb its everlasting rest.

The derelict ship trembled because the leviathan’s immense tentacles coiled around it, tearing through metal and machinery with ease. The crew’s screams echoed throughout the ship, their minds shattered by the unfathomable horror that now engulfed them. Captain Halloway, now stripped of his sanity and humanity, laughed manically because the leviathan’s tendrils breached the chamber, the sphere’s glow intensifying in a cacophony of eldritch light.

Within the blink of an eye fixed, the ship and its occupants vanished, consumed by the cosmic leviathan, their screams silenced by the vast emptiness of space. The universe resumed its indifferent course, perpetually indifferent to the fleeting lives and ambitions of those that dared to awaken the traditional horrors that lurked inside its darkest depths.

The Takeaway

It’s not probably the most amazing story, after all. There are some glaring flaws. Not a stitch of dialog. The story is slightly fuzzy. But on condition that I prompted it with Lovecraft and that this complete thing appeared out of the aether (haha), after simply feeding ChatGPT an image, I feel it’s pretty impressive.

The query is, the best way to use this feature in a possible way? Sure, you may have ChatGPT create mediocre short stories all day long, but what if you must use it to work on a novel, as an illustration?

I can consider a number of interesting possibilities. One is to feed ChatGPT an image and ask it to create an in depth description or ask it to suggest what might occur next.

One other is perhaps to make use of it to create writing prompts around the image to show you how to dig more into what’s occurring in a scene and recover from the blocks you could be experiencing.

And in the event you need pictures to make use of together with your story, I highly recommend Midjourney, an AI text-to-image generator. It’s made an enormous difference in my writing, something I plan on writing more about soon.

The mixture of ChatGPT and Midjourney is incredible for writing fiction. My advice is to get into these tools and just mess around, see what type of crazy things you may create and achieve!