Groked: Three examples of how AI butchered my forthcoming novella

Blazing Reader,

While I don't use AI to write my novels, I do accept editorial critiques from these state-of-the-art language models — but only after I've revised my drafts five or more times.

The latest chatbots provide detailed feedback — occasionally brilliant, often useful, and sometimes bafflingly alien. Grok is the worst offender. He doesn't edit, he vivisects — carving away humanity, voice and depth until there's nothing but an anorectic skeleton of a sentence left for the reader to interpret.

Here are three examples from my forthcoming novella Covid Disobedience:

EXHIBIT A

• ME: Standing back, Rachel said, "She tested positive. She's infected. We're keeping her isolated. It breaks my heart. But we have to. You know we do! We have to keep everyone safe."
• GROK: From the doorway, Rachel barked: "She's positive. Infected. Isolated—for safety. We hate it, but rules are rules!" 

EXHIBIT B

• ME: Rachel yanked open a door slightly off camera. "She has her own bathroom. That's why we gave her our room."
  GROK: Rachel yanked open an off-screen door. "Her own bathroom—our old room!"

EXHIBIT C

• ME: He glanced for a second at his paralyzed wife. Then he nodded at Stefanie, turned and bolted out of the room. 
• GROK: Glance at wife—no bark. Nod to Stefanie. Gone.

The last one sounds like bad poetry.

Claude.ai and ChatGPT, in contrast, don't butcher so much as bloat. While they do trim the fat, they also add on limbs. I'll share some of the strange Frankenstein metaphors they concoct in a future post.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. Covid Disobedience is the prequel to Much Ado About Corona — half set in March 2020, the other half in July 1846. Every other chapter time travels between 19th century Concord, Massachusetts and 21st century Sudbury, Ontario. Find out why in this post: Henry David Thoreau and "COVID Disobedience"

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.