The Opinions - Can You Tell Which Short Story ChatGPT Wrote?

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

In this era of artificial intelligence, who can compose a better beach read for the vacationing masses? The beloved fiction writer Curtis Sittenfeld … or ChatGPT?Listen as Sittenfeld sits down with the Opinion editor Susannah Meadows to talk about what they learned after pitting her writing against artificial intelligence, and hear excerpts from both stories to decide for yourself which is the more compelling read.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Susanna Meadows. I'm an editor in the New York Times Opinion section. My job is to bring writers into our pages who are grappling with big questions and who can surprise us. I'm here today with a fiction writer. I have long been a fan of Curtis Sittenfeld. She's the author of the book Prep and more recently Romantic Comedy

and she's here to talk about a recent piece we worked on together that featured a writing competition of sorts. We pitted an original short story from Curtis that she wrote for the Times against a story created by Chat GBT, GBT, both in the genre of a short, lusty summer beach read. Hi, Curtis.

Hi, Susanna. So before we get into the writing competition, can we talk for a second about your relationship to AI? So I see it as a huge unknown, not necessarily a positive unknown, potentially threatening. And if I'm having a meal with other writers and the topic of AI comes up, it's like a bummer. Like I'm kind of like, oh, who's going to this portion of the evening? I'm not a cheerleader. Like I wanted to write a better story than AI did. Yeah.

But I also feel some sincere curiosity. Like, how would this work? Can it write fiction? Like, in a weird way, if it could write fiction that was interesting to me, that fact would be interesting. Uh-huh. I'm one of many, many novelists whose books were used to train ChatGPT without compensation, without my agreeing to it. And I think at the time I had seven books published and it had used five of them.

And I was like, I am very insulted. It used five. And I'm very insulted. It did not use the other two, which were the ones that were the most negatively reviewed and the lowest selling. Like I was like, even you. So when you came to us with this idea, I was genuinely curious to see what it could. could produce and how good it would be. I mean, just in my defense, you came to me and we're like, wouldn't it be fun to write fiction

for the opinion page? And I was like, that would be fun. And then I think we had some back and forth about a few ideas, including what is a beach read? And then the idea just came to me like, oh, what if it was this contest between AI and me? We would both get the same prompts. will give a list of possible ideas that readers can choose from, and that it's a combination of very summary stuff like pop songs and sand and sunscreen and also mixed in are things that I like to write about like enwee and ambivalence and self-consciousness

and privilege. So we had a list of 20 things that Curtis came up with, And then we gave readers a place where they could write in their own suggestions of what they wanted you and chat GP2 to write about. And then looking at the responses, it seemed pretty clear what they wanted. It was lust. Lust was number one. Regret was number two, which I just, what summarizes humanity more than lust and regret? And then kissing was number three. And so then we gave these suggestions from readers to you, Curtis.

And there were hundreds, right? that you looked through, and so then you decided on what? So I decided on middle age and flip-flops, which even that captures the range. It would be like jet skis, murder, fruity cocktails. I think there was one that was like, when your thighs stick to the chair that you're sitting on outside. But I actually found it moving or touching that,

I think there were at least 10 write-ins for middle-age. But I think people knew that this would be a summer romance or sort of going in that direction and that they were kind of saying, like, let the characters be middle-aged. So I do think there is this kind of cultural hunger for middle-aged romances. And I was glad in a small way to try to satisfy that hunger. So we had our prompts. Write a thousand-word short story in the style of Curtis Sittenfeld that, includes these elements, lust, kissing, flip-flops, regret, and middle age.

So while Curtis was toiling away at her original short story for us, I had the task of entering the prompts into chat cheapy-t, and it took 17 seconds, and the words just appeared. To see the speed at which it spits out sentences was the most unsettling part. Because also, in a very biased way, I'm like, my story is. better. I'm like, it wrote its story. I don't know. A million nine times times and my story is probably not a million times better. So it's like, like the speed is unsettling. So now we're going to play for you the beginning of both short stories, one by ChatGBT, GBT, and one by Curtis, but not necessarily in that order. So you'll have to

guess which is which. After you hear these, we'll come back and we'll tell you if you're right. Let's start with Beatree number one. can see where this is going. When my flight from LaGuardia landed in Minneapolis on that August afternoon, the first text I received was from the executive director of the nonprofit I'd be holding the training for the next day, canceling our dinner because of a family emergency. The second text was from my friend Jenny, asking me to look at the profile of a guy named James on the dating app we both used, and to let her know if it was the same asked

not one question, James, I'd gone out with around Christmas. That date had felt like such a waste of an evening that I'd given myself a break from the app since. By the time the seatbelt light had gone off, I'd texted Jenny to tell her it wasn't, and I'd received a heart on the app from a man who is currently online, whose handle was MTN Biker 1971. He was 53, a year younger than me. He had deep brown eyes and was bald with a gray and brown beard. And three of his five photos featured him on a bike. I swear, I swear, that Mountain Biker 1971 and I already had exchanged generic greetings before it occurred to me that because my setting showed profiles within 10 miles of me,

he was local. Oh, sorry, I typed. Just realize you live in Minnesota and I'm only visiting for 36 hours. Before I could send this, a new message came in from him. What's your favorite fruit that's considered a vegetable, and what's your best episode of TV ever? So I deleted, oh, sorry, and typed Okra and the season finale of Severance. You? Can you see where this is going?

You probably can see where this is going. By the time I was in an Uber, he told me his name was Brian. He worked for an environmental advocacy group. And the previous weekend, on a trail, he'd ridden his business. bike passed a woodpecker sitting on the back of a deer. He'd been so close that he and the deer had made eye contact. I typed, just to clarify, you did or didn't also make eye contact with the woodpecker. Sadly no, he replied. Next time? By the time I'd entered my hotel room, he'd written, I don't usually suggest it this quickly, but want to grab a drink tonight? So far, I'd answered

no question untruthfully. When he'd said he lived in St. Paul, I'd typed, I'm currently in downtown Minneapolis. I hesitated for a few seconds. Then typed, I'm free tonight. All right, so that was just the beginning of Beatriz, number one. Here's the start of the second short story. Let's see if you can tell who wrote what. The flip-flop moment.

Lydia had always been practical. It was her hallmark, the trait that kept her life organized in neat rows, like the files on her desk or the cushions on her sofa. At 48, this practicality had become her armor, protecting her from the reckless impulses that she might have indulged in during her younger years. And so, when she walked into the coffee shop on that sweltering July afternoon, it was with the same cautious optimism that she had applied to everything else in her life. The coffee shop was called Java Junction, an ironic nod to its nondescript location. It was where she met her friends for book club, where she studied with her son while he was in high school.

school and where she'd spent countless hours with her late husband. That was the first thing she'd felt when she entered, the lingering echo of shared memories. She was here for a meeting with her college friend, Julie, and Julie was late, which gave Lydia plenty of time to observe. She sat at a small table near the window, which was always Lydia's favorite spot. The sunlight spilled over the table, creating a halo around her as she skimmed through a magazine, her flip-flops occasionally brushing the edge of the table. She had never been one for extravagant shoes, practical again. But on that day, the flip-flop seemed to betray a different side of her,

a side that wanted to feel something more, something less anchored. Julie arrived, panting slightly from the heat. She was a whirlwind of energy, always dressed in vibrant colors and speaking in rapid bursts. The two friends embraced, and Lydia noticed how the decades had changed them both. Julie still had that unfiltered joy, while Lydia felt a certain, grayness to her own existence. They talked about their lives, Julie's recent move to a beach town, and Lydia's endless workdays, the responsibilities of being a single mother, the growing distance from her teenage son. They laughed about old times and reminisced about their college days,

and for a moment Lydia felt something she hadn't in a while, a spark of connection, of vitality. As they chatted, Lydia noticed a man sitting alone at a nearby table. He was tall, with an easy smile and eyes that seemed to dance with mischief. He wore a pair of flip-flops, practical, but worn with a casual confidence. Lydia couldn't help but glance at him every now and then. Her gaze lingering longer than she intended. Okay, so now you've heard both stories. We can reveal, if you haven't already figured it out yourself,

which one Curtis wrote Curtis? I wrote the first one. The one that has the title, you probably can see where they're. this is going. To me, the difference was so obvious immediately. Just down to the details, Curtis, that you used, like making eye contact with a woodpecker, which is a sentence that I've definitely never read or considered in my life. What I found interesting is that there were similar things that you both hit, aside from the prompts that you both worked off of, like, you both use the word optimism, but you said extravagant optimism, which I love, like, I just,

I savored that when I read it. And then chat GPT's version was cautious optimism, which we've all heard a million times. But it just was so clear that this is a human being writing this, versus the other thing, which was just so dull and soulless. And so anyway, Curtis, tell me what you thought the difference was. Well, it's funny, actually, that you're using the word soulless because more than 20 years ago, I went to the Iowa Writers Workshop. And the director at the time was Frank Conroy. And I might be paraphrasing, but he would say what makes fiction work is not, okay, I'm definitely paraphrasing, but is not pure quality, but you can feel the press of a soul under the words, like one soul communicating with another. And I feel like there is some sweatiness or nervous.

nervousness or yearning that I think is actually is inside of me and is in my fiction and is in a lot of people. But I feel like if you plucked an individual sentence from chat GPT's story, it's probably fine or even better. Like it's probably like smoothly written. But cumulatively something is missing. Like there's a lot. Like, there's a lot of, like, smoothly written. But cumulatively, like, there's not any real emotion or anything that makes it feel very specific. And there was just, there are no stakes in the second one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Sometimes I think of writing styles as spices. The more unusual a flavor is, the more divisive it will be. The people who like it will really like it, the people who don't. And the chat, GPT story feels. like lunch from like a fast, casual chain where you're like on a road trip and you're like, I just have to fill my stomach and like keep driving or whatever. It's just there's nothing special about it. So what did you do to prepare? In general, I like to do quote unquote research for fiction because I feel like it just always makes it interesting and I don't know what I don't know.

And I have a friend who is in her early 50s and lives in New York and like intermittently does dating apps. And she read it for me. And I have another friend who's a serious biker. And I said if Brian's dating app profile handle is Mountain Biker 1971, is that like no real bike or whatever happened? And he was kind of like, it is, do she was his word. I don't know if we say if we say duchy kind of. family podcast. And he was like, but I think it actually does what you're trying to achieve, which is like, I mean, he's born in 1971. You know, like there was things I was trying to do

as succinctly as possible because I had already exceeded the word count. And we should say, I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but all these things that you're talking about are all the things that you're pretty sure chat TPT didn't do. Yeah. And then it made me think, oh, so is that what a soul is? Is that what the human part is? No, I think, I mean, it's true. Like, you know, You know, because I wanted to bring honor to humankind. And you did. Before, oh, thank you. You speaking on behalf of human kind.

I spent a lot of time on this 1,200 words, whether it was getting feedback from my friends and driving to this park or watching. Like, I had seen the David Bowie cover band that I'd seen in real life is called the band that fell to Earth. I had seen them in person, but then watching a little bit of their videos and being like, how many members are in the band?

Yeah, because you want it to feel real. Would you say that is also how you are in the story? Or is that oversimplifying? You mean like because of the effort? And the specificity of the details and all that you... I mean, there's so much of you, even if it's just you researching what the St. Paul Park is like, that's you in there.

Yeah, well, it's funny because if I read fiction by one of my friends, I often have the feeling that I was spending time with them. Yeah. Like, that's how much you can kind of feel someone's essence come through their fiction or feel their personality, come through their fiction. Everyone has a sensibility or, like, words they would or wouldn't use or observations they would or wouldn't make. So, yeah, I mean, I wrote every sentence in this story. So, of course, there's a lot of me in there, even though there's also like none of me in there. Right.

But I also, one thing I want to say is I remain humble about this in the sense that I think this story that AI wrote reads like a story written by AI. Yes, I agree. I did find it somewhat reassuring, at least just for the moment. in terms of writing and creativity, that we're not as screwed as I might have thought for now. But I think that it is adapting quickly, you know, the way this stuff works. If it was drastically improved in like three months, six months, the conversation we're having is sort of true in August 24, and I don't know how long it'll be true.

Right. Curtis, thank you so much for joining me and for doing this experiment. It was so much fun. For me to, thank you, Susanna. So to read the rest of these scintillating beach reads, and I hope you do, you can visit the link in this episode's show notes or visit nwitimes.com and search Sittenfeld. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vichakadurba, Phoebe, Cressamilov, and Jillian Weinberger.

It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabarow, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sohota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Bustett and Christina Samuelski. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.