I've been playing around with the Bing AI and I instructed it to write a story about a conflict between two alien races, the krell and zotrans (I failed to capitalize the names so the AI didn't bother to either it seems). Interesting results, I haven't read it all myself:

Okay, I’ll try to write a story about that. Here is what I came up with:

The krell and the zotrans had been at war for centuries. The krell were a proud and fierce race of warriors, who valued strength and honor above all else. The zotrans were a cunning and inventive race of scientists, who valued knowledge and progress above all else. They fought over resources, territory, and ideology, never willing to compromise or negotiate.

One day, a krell scout ship detected a strange anomaly in the outer rim of their solar system. It was a wormhole, a portal to another region of space and time. The krell captain decided to investigate, hoping to find a new world to conquer or a new enemy to challenge. He ordered his crew to enter the wormhole, unaware of the dangers that awaited them.

On the other side of the wormhole, a zotran research station was orbiting a dying star. The zotrans had been studying the star's final stages of life, hoping to learn more about the secrets of the universe. They had created the wormhole as an experiment, to test their theories of quantum physics and interdimensional travel. They were shocked when they saw a krell ship emerge from the wormhole, and immediately activated their defenses.

The krell ship was greeted by a barrage of lasers and missiles from the zotran station. The krell captain was enraged by this unprovoked attack, and ordered his crew to return fire. A fierce battle ensued, with both sides unleashing their most powerful weapons and tactics. The wormhole became unstable from the energy fluctuations caused by the combat, and began to collapse.

The krell captain realized that he had no chance of winning or escaping. He decided to make one final act of defiance, and aimed his ship's main cannon at the zotran station's core reactor. He hoped to cause a massive explosion that would destroy both his enemies and himself. He fired his cannon, but missed his target by a fraction of a second. Instead of hitting the reactor, he hit the wormhole generator.

The wormhole generator exploded, creating a massive shockwave that ripped apart both the krell ship and the zotran station. The wormhole itself imploded, creating a singularity that swallowed everything in its vicinity. The krell and the zotrans were gone, along with their war and their history. The only thing that remained was a black hole, a silent witness to their folly.

I was given the opportunity to have it write another version
with a different ending so here it is:


Sure, I can try to rewrite it with a different ending. Here is what I came up with:

The krell and the zotrans had been at war for centuries. The krell were a proud and fierce race of warriors, who valued strength and honor above all else. The zotrans were a cunning and inventive race of scientists, who valued knowledge and progress above all else. They fought over resources, territory, and ideology, never willing to compromise or negotiate.

One day, a krell scout ship detected a strange anomaly in the outer rim of their solar system. It was a wormhole, a portal to another region of space and time. The krell captain decided to investigate, hoping to find a new world to conquer or a new enemy to challenge. He ordered his crew to enter the wormhole, unaware of the dangers that awaited them.

On the other side of the wormhole, a zotran research station was orbiting a dying star. The zotrans had been studying the star's final stages of life, hoping to learn more about the secrets of the universe. They had created the wormhole as an experiment, to test their theories of quantum physics and interdimensional travel. They were shocked when they saw a krell ship emerge from the wormhole, and immediately activated their defenses.

The krell ship was greeted by a barrage of lasers and missiles from the zotran station. The krell captain was enraged by this unprovoked attack, and ordered his crew to return fire. A fierce battle ensued, with both sides unleashing their most powerful weapons and tactics. The wormhole became unstable from the energy fluctuations caused by the combat, and began to collapse.

The krell captain realized that he had no chance of winning or escaping. He decided to make one final act of courage, and ordered his crew to abandon ship. He hoped to save as many lives as possible, even if it meant sacrificing his own. He stayed behind on his ship, and steered it away from the wormhole and the zotran station. He hoped to create a diversion that would allow his crew to escape.

The zotran station detected the krell ship's change of course, and assumed it was a trick. They continued to fire at it, until they saw it explode in a brilliant flash of light. They thought they had destroyed their enemy, and celebrated their victory. They did not notice the escape pods that had ejected from the krell ship before it exploded, and were heading towards the wormhole.

The escape pods reached the wormhole just before it closed. They passed through it safely, and emerged in their own solar system. They were picked up by a krell patrol ship, and taken to their home planet. The survivors told their story to their leaders, who were astonished by their bravery and sacrifice.

The krell leaders decided to honor their fallen captain and his crew, by erecting a monument in their memory. They also decided to reconsider their war with the zotrans, and seek a peaceful solution. They realized that their enemy was not so different from them, and that they both shared a curiosity for the unknown.

The zotran station continued to orbit the dying star, unaware of what had happened on the other side of the wormhole. They resumed their research, hoping to create another wormhole someday. They did not know that their enemy had escaped their wrath, and had learned a valuable lesson from their encounter.

The wormhole was gone, along with its secrets and mysteries. The only thing that remained was a star, a faint reminder of its former glory.

At this stage the greatest value of this AI in story writing is probably to create outlines and plots for a human writer to flesh out.

Most Hollywood movie scripts are copy & paste exercises so this AI generated stuff may actually be an improvement!

I'm kind of looking forward to AI generated video game scenarios generated among procedural worlds. That Star Trek-esque thing where you describe or outline a basic scenario and then enter. Something like that cannot be too far away.

Yes, a lot of possibilities there.

I was playing around with Bing Chat a bit more yesterday evening, I asked it to imagine and describe a fictional, advanced alien race. It went into great detail describing attributes, attitudes, history, how they interacted with other aliens, created an image of one etc. But at a point it stopped responding and refused to answer more questions about "them", something I have seen it do a few times. Odd.

Ai constructed Star Wars?
Balenciaga Star Wars

On the other hand AI is very scary (even without the take over an nuke everyone scenario) :

https://twitter.com/heyBarsee/status/1643517640881651712?t=acUcINV2fhEzKb5DiNyG6w&s=19

I should have ran with the idea.....

Author uses AI generators, including ChatGPT, to write nearly 100 books in less than a year

I bet authors like Herbert, Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein would have been glad that they lived when they did!

5000 words per "book," lol.

Those aren't novels. A sci-fi novel is typically 90,000 - 250,000+ words. While genre fiction is quite formulaic in structure, unlike literature, there's a lot more that goes into the story and prose that makes the job of AI significantly harder than it seems. I've read a few short stories written by AI, and what I noticed is they are extremely exposition heavy, which violates Hemingway's rule of "show, don't tell." Too much exposition is a no-no. Capturing the unique personality of characters and knowing when to shut them up and reinforce with narrative is a skill few writers ever perfect. I doubt AI will master this anytime soon.