MY AI
Say hello to my little friend(s)...
Let me say right up front—I don’t have anything earth shattering or particularly insightful to add to the AI debate, although many others in the Substack community have plenty of fascinating takes.
Earlier this week, for instance, came this piece from Erik Barmack about AI storyboarding—
Erik’s been diving deep into the pros and cons of AI debate for the creative community and Hollywood for several months now, and I urge you to go back and check out all his pieces. Like any creative professional, I’m concerned about how AI will negatively impact the industry, but I’d be hypocrite to suggest I haven’t tried to see what it can do for me, as well.
Here’s how I’ve utilized AI in my own creative endeavors:
ChatGPT— I’ve used ChatGPT for all kinds of research (with the usual caveats), but I’ve also fed it log lines and elevator pitches that I’ve already written, “dialoging” with it to refine and sharpen those log lines. I tried to use BookGPT to extract an outline or synopsis from a novel-in-progress, but with admittedly less than stellar results.
LeonardoAI—I’ve used it for artwork here on my Substack (including the “Scott Knox” photograph last week), and fun with some logos—
I’ve also used it for “imagining” certain scenes, buildings, locations for some my more speculative work.
As someone who has no true drawing or sketching ability, I’ve been enamored with the chance to visually create things that otherwise would’ve been beyond my grasp.
Speedread AI and Scriptsense—These are both book and screenplay coverage services, pretty similar in form and function, and I’ve used them to not only test the quality of their respective platforms (call it simple curiosity), but also to see if they might be useful for identifying issues with/or polishing a script. While I’ve been impressed—broadly—with these tools, their value for any individual creator might be limited (and not necessarily cheap), although knowing the quality, depth, and breadth of scuh analysis that an executive using these tools might see is illuminating, if nothing else.
As always, know the enemy!
Now, I don’t have a beta-reading group on standby for my novels. And on the screen side, unless I’m actively in a writer’s room, I don’t have easy or consistent access to other screenwriters or an extensive feedback community, either That’s not to say I can’t draw on those things, and often do, relying on the generosity and availability of my fellow writers, but most of the time I’m a one man show. So, the ability to use these kinds of tools as a sounding board, a way to get “objective” feedback or even just a “second opinion,” while difficult to quantify, still feels welcome and potentially worthwhile, all the same.
Am I only adding more wood to the very fire that might burn down our creative industry? No, I don’t think so, or haven’t seen any proof so far. I still feel we are a long way from any LLM writing a truly quality novel or script, or even a passable one. There’s just something magical and interstitial that happens so far above and beyond the page—call it soul, creativity, or something else—pure brute force modeling or algorithms still can’t grasp it, still don’t quite “get” it. But these tools and others are coming, and to the extent they can improve our work flow, and not merely just take work away, then I think it’s valuable to engage with them.
As always, feel free to—
Thanks for writing this, particularly as there are plenty of folks who want artists to disavow generative AI completely. It's always good to get others' perspectives and to learn what tools are out there. Know your enemy--so true. Otherwise it's nothing more than rumor and speculation.