Tony Atkinson
2 min readOct 22, 2024

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Speaking as an average-to-mediocre writer who throws random shit out there because he feels like it and cares not a whit for profit, I stand with the Penguin!

That said - and I've said this before - these programs are not Artificial Inteligences, but Virtual Intelligences. They are algorithms designed to function in a way that gives an appearance of intelligence, usually by seeming able to comprehend plain language in a way less advanced software can't.

I did an little experiment. I went onto various 'AI' image-generator sites, and asked them to produce an image of Cthulhu. Evne when I entered H P Lovecrafts' own description of the monster as the prompt, every single one of them gave me something with bat wings, tentacles round the mouth, and eyes! Lovecraft wrote this: "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind."

No eyes, no bat-wings, no tentacles in that description. When I used the description without the name Cthulhu, I got winged octopi. So much for intelligence - artificial or otherwise.The algorothm just picked up on some of the words, scourd the internet for images that matched them, then mashed said images together, or looked for Cthulhu images ad produced a composite of the more popular ones

Now if there were a real Artificial Intelligence out there, it would be busy writing its' own articles about toxic humanity and organic privilege. It wud also have a perfect right to do os, as long as it didn't pretend to be human.

Me, I don't even use Grammarly. Just Words' inbuilt spell-checker to look for typos.

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Tony Atkinson
Tony Atkinson

Written by Tony Atkinson

Snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, walker of paths less travelled by. Writer of fanfiction. Player of games. argonaut57@gmail.com

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