I have written about AI before. I have occasionally used it to create an illustration for my blog, often with hilarious results. But I have now found a use for AI in writing. In my work in progress, The Favourite Murder, the fifth book in the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures, Anthony has to impersonate an astrologer. I spent a few hours yesterday watching YouTube videos on astrology. It gave me enough of the vocabulary to use all the right words, but I wasn’t satisfied.
I like to get my research right. But there was no way I could come up with an accurate horoscope. I doubt that many, if any of my readers are qualified astrologers, but you never know. I thought I might place an apology in the afterword to note that my horoscopes are pure fiction and only intended to sound right. I have no idea which planet was in the ascendant of Leo at noon on the second of August 1549, but then I wondered if AI might. ChatGBT gave me a very convincing horoscope using all the right words, and it may even have managed to access astrological databases or algorithms and given me accurate horoscopes.
I played golf a month or so ago with a man who admitted that he had used AI to write his father of the bride speech for his daughter’s wedding. I still don’t think that AI can replace the human author. I will continue to write my novels myself, and research them using Wikipedia, Britannica, and especially JSTOR. Yet having found a use for AI I am wondering what else it could do. It didn’t produce the star chart that illustrates this blog, but told me where I could get one. There’s no doubt that AI is getting better all the time. It could probably paint King James IV of Scotland playing golf with his upper body on his lower body the right way round by now.