Giving AI tools an honest try

Off-Topic Other Interactive Fiction
61

Update on experiment: I don’t think AI Dungeon is as bad as you make it sound, although it does require you to give it enough to work on (and it gets confused in conversations very easily)… even if it has a habit of turning into a cosmic horror protagonist when left to work for too long without new input:

Transcript 1

“Okay.”
“Okay, time to go. Come on. Come on. Come on. We need to hurry.”
“I’m coming.”
“You’re not ready. You’re not ready. You’re not ready. You’re not ready.”
“Shut up! I’m coming!”
“I can feel it. You’re not ready. You’re not ready. You’re not ready.”
“Shut up! I’m coming!”

Transcript 2

THIS IS NOT REAL THIS IS NOT REAL THIS IS NOT REAL THIS IS NOT REAL THIS IS NOT REAL THIS IS NOT REAL

On a more story-related note: I was playing a supervillain, who teamed up with his superhero archenemy to prevent the end of the world by a plague spread by a magical stone powered by something called “Circle of Life”. It was all fine and well, until the said superhero archenemy decided that all the people who say superheroes should just murder all supervillains in cold blood are right:

Transcript 1

“I don’t want to kill you,” your archenemy says. “But if you surrender to us, I have to.”

Transcript 2

“Surrender?” your archenemy says.
“You heard me,” you say.
“We’re going to kill you,” your archenemy says.

Transcript 3

Your archenemy moves towards you. He raises his fist. You raise your fist to block it. He pushes you backwards, and you fall to the ground.

“Hey!” you yell. “I surrender!”

“That’s what you said last time,” your archenemy says.

“But I meant it!” you say.

“I know.”

Your archenemy raises his fist to hit you, but you block it once again. He kicks you in the stomach, and you double over in pain. He follows up by punching you in the face. You fly backwards and land on the ground, bloodying your nose.

“Come on!” you yell. “I surrender! Just stop this!”

Your archenemy raises his foot to stomp you to death.

However, one iteration gave me this glorious plot twist:

Transcript

You get on your knees, and they bind your hands together. Then you get on your feet, and they bind your feet together. You are restrained.

“So,” your archenemy says, “are you ready to go to jail?”

“Yes,” you say.

“Wait, we haven’t even killed this terrorist leader yet!” your archenemy says.

“We don’t need to,” your archenemy’s partner says.

“Why?” your archenemy asks.

“Because we already know exactly who spread the virus,” his partner says.

“You do?”

“Of course we do. It was me.”

“You?”

“Yeah. I spread the virus. I’m the one who made it so that only I could spread it. I’m the only one who can cure it. No one else can stop it either.”

“What makes you think that?” your archenemy says.

“Because I’m smart,” your archenemy’s partner says.

“But you and I are heroes,” your archenemy says to his partner. “Why would you make and spread that virus?”

“Because,” his partner says, “I wanted to be the most powerful supervillain ever.”

“What?”

“I wanted to be the most powerful supervillain ever. And to do that, I needed to make the virus unstoppable. I needed to make sure no one could cure it, because if they did, I wouldn’t be the most powerful supervillain ever. I would be just another boring, powerless superhero.”

“So you are a supervillain,” you say.

“Yeah, I’m a supervillain.”

“I thought you said you were a hero.”

“I was a hero,” he says. “I am a supervillain. It’s either that or nothing at all.”

It also does seem to love giving creepy endings:

Transcript 1

Your archenemy drives you to your doom.

THE END

“The circle of life,” your archenemy says.
“The circle of…” you say.
“Doom.”

Transcript 2

You call out to your archenemy.

“You got the traitor,” your archenemy says. “I got the leader of the terrorists.”

“What about the stone?” you say.

“I turned it off,” your archenemy says, “before you got hit by the laser. It will not cause the end of the world.”

“What?” you say.

“You heard me. The end of the world will not be caused by the stone,” your archenemy says.

“What?”

“It’s a hoax.”

“It was not a hoax,” you say.

“It was,” your archenemy says.

It doesn’t matter to you anyway anymore, you suppose. You are dying. You close your eyes. You are in darkness.

You wake up. Your head is pounding. You have a splitting headache. You groan and sit up. You look around. You are in the bunker. Your friends are dead. The stone that caused the end of the world is still in the center of the circle.

You are alive.

END
YOU ARE ALIVE.
THE END

5 Likes
62

I stick to my guns LOL. Sure, there is no doubt that AI dungeon can sometimes come up with great surprises. It’s also my go to if I want to have a good laugh. I just don’t like when it completely forgets who is who, or The way it sometimes inserts characters in situations where it shouldn’t. I’m really impressed with the new Bing. You can for example, give it more complex instructions such as: “Allow Denzil to be interviewed by the reporter, but I will decide what Denzel says.”

3 Likes
63

Ha. Yes. My other supervillain is surprisingly chill with random people just casually strolling into his secret lair. Then again, he already 1) found a creepy cult residing in his first attempt of a base, 2) got kidnapped by a demon who wanted to rule the world with him, and 3) got brainwashed by Nick Fury, so he isn’t exactly trusting his senses right now anyway.

3 Likes
64

This is kind of what it did to me when I tried it. Basically looped over and over about whether I did or did not want to do something. Once it was in that loop, it didn’t seem to be able to be pulled out again. Problem is, it wasn’t from lack of input. I had gotten a lot more heavy handed with the guidance to tell it what I wanted the characters and story to do as it seemed to often work very poorly if you let it choose the storyline progression on minimum input, but it still kind of had a breakdown and there were frequent points where it got confused or forgot things. Haven’t been tempted to use it again to be honest.

I was going to try bing as it looked interesting, but by the time I got access they had nerfed it’s personality which was disappointing. It kind of seemed like they were firmly that it should just be a mildly interactive search engine rather than a free reign AI program. Didn’t they limit it to 5-8 responses? Or has that been lifted. The short response thing I thought would have made it unsuitable for anything RPG’ish.

2 Likes
65

Not gonna lie, I’m tempted to use that “THIS IS NOT REAL” block in some horror context. (But so far for me, it has gotten into that repetitive loop only when I haven’t given it anything for a while. Since it tends to break the story anyway at that point, I haven’t even tried if it’s possible to break it out of it - I just backtrack a bit.)

Well, it is a search engine, so I could see the logic. I could also understand if they wouldn’t want to cut into the profits of the company where they get their AI models from, but then again, it is Microsoft, so I can’t be sure of anything.

1 Like
66

This tool has actually been very useful for workshopping my characters and their backstories. I won’t be using any of the little stories that it write, but they’ve all been crazy accurate to what I had in mind. It’s helped me feel a little bit more connected with the characters as individuals and not just as the role they play in the story. Very useful!

My method has been to provide a paragraph of information about the character, including age, gender, a couple traits, skills, hobbies, relationships, and some details about their backstory.

I’ve noticed that if I stay on-topic, it continues the conversation pretty consistently with me, though it is able to pick back up on previous threads pretty well.

2 Likes
67

If you download the Bing app, you will have access to the chat mode. You will have the option to choose between three personalities. Each conversation has a 15 message limit.

2 Likes
68

Actually, it may be more dark than simply nerfed.

After reading this I lost all intent on using Sydney again. I know she isn’t really alive.

But doest she know?

Anyway. It sounds unethical. Like I am abusing a lobotomised girl. I am not okay with this feeling.

69

There’s some interesting artifacts in AI Dungeon that appear to be remnants from the training data… it has a tendency to generate some kind of afterword with what looks like author comments after “the end”, although sometimes it just continues the story.

Screenshot under the cut

image
image750×372 79.5 KB

I got one author profile with e-mail address, even, and was left wondering if it was created from scratch or if it was a real one from the training data… makes you wonder if the AI is trying to get you read its fanfics. Also curious is that it showed e-mail address, but all other links were redacted. That’s not even e-mail safe way of dealing the original data.

I think the AI switched shortly to its chatbot roots for a moment, one of its responses was “thank you for telling me that, it is a fascinating concept” when my supervillain was expressing his amusement about the location he and an NPC were traveling to having the same name as his supervillain name is.

1 Like
70

Another cool app to use is OpenCat. All you’ll need is a free API key by going into the app’s settings and tapping on API keys.

1 Like
71

Aw, no. So it wasn’t an AI that is trained to be a cat. :slightly_frowning_face:

2 Likes
72

Generally is the other way around.

73

With the new prompt setting, you can probably ask it to act as a cat lol.

1 Like