AI Wrote and Illustrated This Story for Me
Testing Once Upon a Bot
Once Upon a Bot will create an entire story for you based on a simple natural language prompt. In addition to the text, it also generates images to complement the story. The solution currently allows you to create three free stories and then asks for $10 per month to create more. As an early “supporter,” the site says that you can create unlimited stories every month.
The website says that nearly 70,000 stories have been written by the AI model. Text generation is provided by GPT-3, and image generation is done via Stable Diffusion. Once Upon a Bot’s creator is Charlie Holtz.
How Does it Work?
Like most solutions in this space, it all begins with a cursor blinking in an empty text box. It is up to you to describe some of the elements you would like to see in the story. After you do that, you need to pick a story genre. The options today are Classic, Scifi, Shakespeare, Western, Seuss, Epic, Poem, and Mystery. Chose the genre and then click the “create” button.
A Story Example
I began with the prompt: A man, a woman, an elf, and a dog sharing a bottle of bourbon, but there is an approaching enemy army. I selected the Epic genre, but I believe it shifted me over to Classic because I haven’t signed up for the paid plan. Here is the result.
The Battle of the Bourbon
The man, the woman, the elf, and the dog were sitting around a fire, enjoying a bottle of bourbon. Suddenly, they heard the sound of an army approaching. "Quick, hide!" said the man. They all ran into the nearest building and hid under a table.
The enemy army came into the building and began searching for them. They looked under every table, but they couldn't find the man, the woman, the elf, or the dog. Finally, the leader of the army came over to their table. He looked under it and saw the four of them cowering in fear. "Aha!" he said. "I've found you at last!"
The man, the woman, the elf, and the dog were captured by the enemy army and taken away. They were put in a prison cell and the door was locked. "What are we going to do?" asked the woman. "I don't know," said the man. "But we're not giving up without a fight!"
The man, the woman, the elf, and the dog managed to escape from their prison cell. They snuck past the guards and ran into the forest. "We're free!" said the man. "But we're not out of this yet. We need to find a way to stop that army!"
"I know a way," said the elf. "But it's going to be dangerous."
"I'm ready for anything," said the man. "Let's do it!"
The man, the woman, the elf, and the dog made their way through the forest to the enemy camp. They snuck past the guards and made their way to the enemy leader's tent.
"This is it," said the man. "Are you ready?"
"I'm ready," said the woman.
"I'm ready," said the elf.
"I'm ready," said the dog.
They burst into the tent and confronted the enemy leader. "Surrender now or face the consequences!" said the man.
"Never!" said the enemy leader. "I'll never surrender!"
"Very well," said the man. "If that's your decision, then you leave me no choice."
He pulled out a bottle of bourbon and threw it at the enemy leader. The enemy leader was so surprised that he dropped his sword and surrendered. "You're lucky I don't have a gun," said the man.
"Now drop your weapons and surrender or face the consequences!" The enemy army surrendered and the man, the woman, the elf, and the dog were victorious.
"That was a close one," said the woman.
"Too close," said the man. "But we did it! We stopped that army!"
"And we saved the day!" said the dog.
There you have it. The entire story was generated by AI. The text and images are presented here without any editing. As of this week, you can do two things at this stage. You can refresh the images if you would like them to generate alternatives. You can also click a button to write another chapter. Both of these features are part of a paid plan only.
Tackling the Blank Page
The Once Upon a Bot website features some example stories that are much better than this. You may have noticed how often the list of characters was repeated and a few other awkward story elements that are not very humanlike.
However, the story is creative. The prompt didn’t suggest the main characters would be imprisoned, nor did it suggest they would escape and then go back into harm’s way to confront the enemy army’s leader. And the idea that the army leader would surrender for merely having a bourbon bottle thrown at him was novel if unlikely.
What we have is a plot with mediocre prose and dialogue. There are some examples with better results, but this isn’t really that bad. AI writing tools such as Jasper AI, Paragraph AI, and GPT-3’s Playground also will generate some mediocre first attempts as poems, essays, and blog posts. You need to coax the systems into generating more polished outputs and generally give the final piece a healthy dose of editing.
So, none of these solutions eliminate the need to write and edit. What they do is start filling the page. The blank page problem is common among writers of all genres. How do you get started? Once Upon a Bot does a nice job of getting you started. That alone can improve efficiency.
There is also the issue of creativity. Beyond helping to make the writing process more efficient, text-generation solutions are creating new ideas on those blank pages. Some of those ideas would not have arisen organically through the human writer’s process. Generative AI solutions are not just about productivity. Very often, they are collaborators in the creative process.
