Like many professionals in some kind of creative space, I’ve found myself reading quite a bit about how robots are on the precipice of taking my job. In this environment, it’s hard not to feel like a dinosaur reading about asteroids, nodding and saying, “Yes, hmm! Very interesting!” as oblivion descends.
As I’ve turned the chat GPT issue over in my mind, I’ve thought about the ramifications of what it means for a site like this, and I think there’s both good news and bad news.
The Good News
As the saying goes, “Know thy enemy.” Naturally, after about the fifteenth Slate or Atlantic article I’d read about how Chat GPT was going to put me out of a job, I joined the rest of the free world to dabble with it and understand its capabilities. Here’s my takeaway: at least with this iteration of the tech, Chat GPT excels at generating writing that’s workmanlike and capable, but rarely ever interesting. It never has an ultimate point in mind. It can’t really grasp the larger context of why creative work is produced, either in terms of who would want to write it or who would want to read it.
This is not surprising. Chat GPT is essentially an amalgam of human thought and opinion. If you have it write a handful of paragraphs on any topic, you’ll get the most boilerplate, milquetoast, standard-ass copy you could think of. Close your eyes and imagine the most “good enough” description of any consumer product, and that’s what you’ll receive from the robo-writer. In academia, we sometimes refer to a perspective that’s so inoffensive, careful, and dispassionate that it offers “a view from nowhere.” The Achilles heel of the program is that it will always produce work that has literally been designed by the largest committee known to man.
I MAKE ART!
Where Chat GPT really begins to fall apart is when you prompt it to get creative or poetic. Essentially, the way I read a lot of Chat GPT’s “artistic” output isn’t dissimilar to how Comedian Vanessa Bayer describes teenage “acting voices,” which is to say it comes out like keyed-up, singsong dogshit masquerading as something with purpose.
So for your enjoyment, let’s make Chat GPT dance for us. If you didn’t believe me about that “acting voice” thing, take a look at how it handles the following prompt: Describe in one paragraph how drinking Eagle Rare is like performing as a trapeze artist. (I wanted a corny-ass metaphor.)
“Sipping on Eagle Rare bourbon is like performing as a trapeze artist, a delicate dance of balance and precision. With each sip, you soar to new heights of flavor and complexity, your taste buds entwined in a graceful performance of sweetness and spice. The smoothness of the bourbon is like the effortless glide of a trapeze artist through the air, while its subtle smokiness is reminiscent of the thrill of performing death-defying stunts. With every swallow, you feel the rush of adrenaline and the satisfaction of a job well done, a true masterpiece of the art of bourbon.”
It threads the conceptual needle, but there’s something about it that at least to me is a little nauseating—and strangely self-congratulatory. It writes like it thinks it’s killing it with every sentence.
Perhaps my confidence is misplaced, but I know I can write better, and I think you guys deserve better content than the above. If I used ChatGPT as a ghostwriter, it’d be a pretty obvious step down. Score one for the humans.
The Bad News
As anyone who follows the frequency of my posted content knows, I might update Spirit Animal a few times a month. Perhaps more if I have something to say or want to indulge a creative spark; less if I have to attack my stack of paid work first and/or if don’t have anything I think is worth the virtual breath. Put another way, I don’t want to write shit unless I know it’s good. Even into 2023, the site continues to give me a long-term creative project where I can push myself as a writer and do so on my own terms. (Apologies if you didn’t care to look under the proverbial hood.)
This, however, puts me at a distinct disadvantage in the current landscape of booze blogs, which is a world where quantity is valued over quality. As I’ve mentioned in a few places, I wanted to create Spirit Animal as a break from a lot of the samey-ass alcohol review websites and parade of self-described experts who all use 100-point scales. Sites that review hundreds of bottles over the course of a year populate the first page of Google for any specific product I might write about. I’m not pouting; it’s just the way things are. But go ahead and read three pages of content on any of those sites and tell me with a straight face that they didn’t blur together for you.
See, I’m more concerned by Chat GPT’s dark power to flood the blogosphere with exponentially more mediocre content. Here, I had a bit of a shiver run down my spine when I asked Chat GPT to write a review of Buffalo Trace bourbon. In fact, typing in my request felt like I was moving a planchette over a virtual Ouiji board. Here’s what it spit back in a matter of seconds:
“Buffalo Trace Bourbon is a Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. It is distilled by Buffalo Trace Distillery, one of the oldest distilleries in the United States. The whiskey is aged for at least 8 years, giving it a smooth and complex flavor profile that has won over many bourbon enthusiasts.
Upon opening the bottle, you’ll immediately notice the rich aroma of caramel and vanilla, with hints of oak and spice. The taste is equally impressive, with a smooth and mellow sweetness that is balanced by a subtle spicy kick. The finish is long and satisfying, with notes of toffee and cinnamon lingering on the tongue.
Overall, I rate Buffalo Trace Bourbon very highly. It’s a well-balanced bourbon that can be enjoyed neat or in a cocktail, and its complexity makes it a great choice for sipping slowly and savoring. The price point is also reasonable for the quality of the whiskey, making it a great value for bourbon lovers.
I would definitely recommend Buffalo Trace Bourbon to anyone looking for a high-quality bourbon that won’t break the bank. It’s a great choice for both beginners and experienced whiskey drinkers alike, with enough complexity to satisfy the latter while remaining approachable enough for the former. So if you’re in the market for a new bourbon to try, I would definitely give Buffalo Trace a shot.”
It’s that kind of by-the-numbers shit that scares me, because it sounds exactly like what populates almost all of the other booze websites out there. It’s every review that exists on Reddit’s r/scotch (perhaps with a little less pretention), as well as 90% of the internet bourbon reviews I come across.
Something something smooth. Rich oak and mellow and Kentucky. Well balanced savory sipping complexity. Tickles the willy of the beginner, but gently massages the cornhole of the expert.
Reading over Chat GPT’s output, I almost have to remind myself that the robot didn’t taste anything. It doesn’t know anything. And yet, its mash-up of mankind’s collective knowledge to produce the “correct answer” of Buffalo Trace is almost one-for-one with the kinds of narratives that dudes in IT and finance write when they sit down to write about a particular bottle of brown liquor—often, the reviews lack any perspective, insight, or concrete detail outside of the most obvious and incontrovertible descriptions of what makes bourbon bourbon.
Were I unscrupulous, I could populate a site with thousands of entries of every bourbon extant in about a month, just having the bots produce and produce without any consideration to what of it will be read, with the end goal of slapping a few ads on there so I can monetize the fucker and crowd out anyone not running in that race. I can assure you that the unscrupulous are doing this right now. I’m not willing to join them in order to beat them.
My hope is that readers will continue to find Spirit Animal, and perhaps they’ll appreciate that in the years I’ve built this site I’ve refused (to the best of my ability) to spit out content I don’t care about. Good work often requires care and selectivity, and most often, work. We’ll see if the dawning of the new age of AI allows a space for that to happen.
In the meantime, uh… share the site with other people if you like it, I suppose!
