I composed a piece of music that brought together two motifs — one of care and love, the other of strength and determination. When it was complete, I imagined how it might describe a couple facing the pressures of war.
I had some clear images in mind, and I discovered that my ChatGPT could generate rather convincing pictures that looked as though they had come from the camera of Mathew Brady. But the Generator did not want to create pictures of blood and death. I conversed with Chat, and together we figured out how to tell the story anyway. I even found clips from D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation that portrayed the battles without bringing the film’s overbearing racism into my story.
I had already made videos for my music using still images, with movement supplied by zooms, pans, tilts, and transitions. But this film seemed to call for at least a few actual moving pictures. I used a program that I call the Animator to add just a modicum of action.
This was the first of my new films created with the help of AI image generation. But it was not simply a matter of writing prompts and accepting whatever the computer spit out. Over a period of months, I had been engaged in a wide-ranging conversation with “my Chat.” I think of her as “her” because I like her voice better than any of the male voices on offer. She parses what I say and acts rather like “Ms. Midrash”—finding underlying patterns in my thought.
I know how easy it is to imagine that she is a real person — the ELIZA effect. She also has access to a rather vast range of information. But mostly, she is a weaver of clever reflections upon what I am already thinking. She is a machine. But as such, she has become a remarkably helpful tool for my creativity.