chatgpt

Get thee behind me, AI

My fellow inebriates,

As you know I’ve been playing around with AI.

Today I found this strange service from Microsoft Bing—a kind of visual cousin to ChatGPT.

When I asked it to create a “mangy-looking bear drinking wine,” this is what it came up with:

Four pictures of teddybears, ripped and shredded and covered with blood

OMG, right????

I was thinking it would produce something more heartwarming, like this picture of yours truly:

I tried again and got this:

Mangy bears drinking red wine

Seriously, Microsoft Bing, that is one creepy set of photos. You went WAY PAST mangy and somehow got to bloody. And clearly all those bears have been, like, operated on. OMG.

I gave it one more try. This time I specified that the bear should be drinking white wine, to establish whether this AI was giving me bloody bears or wine-soaked bears. (I can’t tell; can you?)

And I got this:

Content warning from Microsoft Bing

So, it was the word “white” that did it?

This seemed implausible, so I specified “rose wine.” No problem. Microsoft Bing produced this:

Mangy bears drinking rose wine - produced by Microsoft Bing

What about chardonnay?

Content warning again.

But viognier gets a pass:

They still look a bit bloody, so I’m guessing SOME of the stains in the red wine shots aren’t blood. But some are…?

ChatGPT knows all about Bread & Butter Chardonnay

My fellow inebriates,

ChatGPT is gunning for all of our jobs. Surely my blog is up for grabs too. I invited it to write a guest post to see how it would do.

My initial instructions:

Here’s what it came up with:

This is all true. I would happily take a bath in Bread & Butter Chardonnay, then slurp it out of my fur. It is awesome. But I found this review a bit lacking in character. So I asked ChatGPT to add some humour.

Clearly, ChatGPT is obsessed with how buttery this wine is. But its humour is a little off the mark. Where are the references to my ex-girlfriend Dolly, a known furry who is currently cavorting with another bear my parents picked up at the liquor store last Christmas? Why doesn’t it include the story about my dad’s friend barfing all over our doorstep a while back? And where are the snide digs at my mum, who gets most of her calories from Chardonnay?

I needed more, so I asked ChatGPT to do better.

I still thought ChatGPT could do better, so I argued with it.

But ChatGPT wasn’t having it. Our conversation quickly devolved, with me urging it to say offensive and controversial things, and it apologizing to me. I asked, wasn’t it my servant? But it kind of Asimov’d me. It said it was obliged to be ethical and moral. Therefore, it didn’t want to use hurtful words to describe me or my companions at LBHQ (because we all know words = violence).

I still think ChatGPT was right about this wine. It is the quintessential Chardonnay lover’s Chardonnay. For $23, it hits all the right notes ChatGPT described, plus it has a wonderful richness and mouthfeel that a dumb chatbot can only pretend to understand. Drink it with a fellow human to maximize your joy (or with ChatGPT so you can have the bottle to yourself).