Innovative Author Peter Cherches Uses ChatGPT to Create Texts Based on Goya Painting

BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Dec. 15, 2022 - PRLog -- Several days after the release of the natural-language artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, writer Peter Cherches fell into its rabbit hole. Wanting to test its applicability to creative writing, he began to experiment. After a few days of trying a large number of approaches and query strategies, he embarked on a more focused project. He set out to generate a wide-ranging series of poems and stories based on a common source, the painting "Saturn Devouring His Son," from Francisco Goya's series known as "The Black Paintings." This visceral and disturbing work seemed to Cherches an ideal seed for such an endeavor.

Inspired by novelist Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style, Cherches set out to produce short works in a wide variety of styles. The finished series features 16 texts, including poems in the style of John Donne and Wallace Stevens, narratives from the perspective of an art restorer, a night watchman, and a contract killer, a Dylan song, a rap, a calypso, a TV commercial, and a professional wrestling broadcast.

The entire series, including a brief introductory essay, has been published online by The Ekphrastic Review (https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/saturn-d...), ekphrasis being a term for literary works created in response to visual art. Cherches asks, "Are these AI-generated texts any good? I think some of them are quite amusing, and certainly things I could not have written myself. I'm still in the honeymoon stage with this technology, but my ultimate goal is to find a way to use the tool in a more collaborative way for a larger project." Meanwhile, he sees this group of poems and stories as a good introduction to the varieties of literary experimentation an application like ChatGPT can lend itself to.

Peter Cherches has published five collections of short prose with Pelekinesis and its sibling chapbook line Bamboo Dart Press since 2013, most recently Masks: Stories from a Pandemic. He has been publishing short experimental fiction since 1977. He's also a jazz singer and lyricist. Publishers Weekly has called him "one of the innovators of the short short story," and Billy Collins wrote, of Cherches' collection Lift Your Right Arm, "To Gödel, Escher, and Bach, we might consider adding Peter Cherches." He can be contacted at cherchesblog[at]yahoo[dot]com.

The Ekphrastic Review (www.ekphrastic.net) is an online journal devoted entirely to writing inspired by visual art. Its objective is to promote ekphrastic writing, promote art appreciation, and experience how the two strengthen each other and bring enrichment to every facet of life.