Composing with AI

Transformations

One of the “skills” ChatGPT has is transforming a text from one genre to the next. I first recognized this ability when asking it to transform my syllabus into an escape room. People have asked me if ChatGPT writes better than I do. For the most part, my answer is “not yet” because there is just too much context I am able to use that it cannot. However, when it comes to comic ideas or humorous premises, it has a kind of dedication to the bit that carries it through to the end, where I would probably lose interest after the outline scrawled on the napkin. I am not sure that makes it better as a writer, but it certainly is more dutiful. Words like “skill,” “ability,” and “dutiful" do not strictly apply, but they are a useful shorthand.

Students can test out the transformation abilities with their own writing or found pieces of writing. I find it most satisfying to ask ChatGPT to transfer or transpose the writing into a form that is as different as possible than the origin. For example, transforming a corporate mission statement into a love letter, an argumentative essay into a haiku, or a political speech into a recipe. While hallucinations abound, that is not the focus of the activity, which has more in common with Raymond Queneau’s exercises in style. The hope is that these transformations teach an alacrity with form and open up other creative impulses. Moving a text so far out of its genre may even help students find their way out of the proverbial box, which we say we value so much. This kind of genre hopping has epitomized many of my initial explorations with ChatgPT and appear frequently in a project I dreamed up thanks to the class.