As both a writer and a photographer, I’m going to encounter the world of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) engines and chatbots. It is, regarding the latter, already upon me. Some of the photo agencies through which I sell my work already have distinctive categories licensing images for inclusion in works employing AI. The horse is already out of the barn.
I’m not always an early adopter of new technology, although I made the shift from IBM Selectric to word processor relatively early. I put up my first home page somewhere around 1994-95.
Where to start?
One of my recurring blog post subjects came to mind, and I got curious.
Here is my first “conversation” with a chatbot, verbatim:
BN: “Write a sentence in Middle English describing the knight Sir Gawain.”
ChatGPT: Sir Gawain was a bold and valiant knight, adorned with armor resplendent and a heart as steadfast as the noonday sun.
BN: “Can you answer in Middle English, not modern English?”
ChatGPT: Sire Gawain was a bold and doughty knight, yclad in shining armure and with a stedfast herte like the noonday sonne.
BN: “Describe Gawain’s horse, Gringolet.”
ChatGPT: Gringolet, Gawain’s steed, was a stalwart coursere, fair and strong, with a glossy hide that gleamed like burnished gold, and a noble countenance that struck awe into the hearts of onlookers.
I didn’t entirely stump the band. Those last two sentences look as if they’re in some version of — at least — antique English.
I’m not certain what to make of the assertion that Gringolet’s “countenance” left onlookers awestruck. An odd way to describe a horse. I’ll let that go.
What actually happened there is that the chatbot replaced some contemporary English words with ones that were, more or less, in use in, say, the 14th century.
It has a relatively large body of digital medieval language from which to cadge that vocabulary, beginning with the most obvious: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (your own reading of the “Prologue,” however many years ago, gives you “the yonge sonne”).
The fact that “Middle English” describes several hundred years’ of language opens up a lot of potential sources. It’s also a time during which there were no spelling conventions. It’s easy to make a word look the part, simply by transliterating it into some old or old-looking form.
The substitutions Sir/Sire, armor/armure, courser/coursere and others are spellings that were used in that era, but our contemporary words often appeared, too, just a we spell them now.
What’s missing is any difference in structure or expression. Words are replaced, but not how they’re used to form sentences. Depending on the source and when it was composed, Middle English could be constructed quite differently than our modern version. You have only to think of Shakespeare — already writing in more “modern” English — to think of how differently he phrased things.
In fact, the bot’s first stab, with “armor resplendent,” is more representative of Middle English diction than its second attempt, “shining armure.”
As for the fact that the bot did portray these two characters from old tales with some degree of verisimilitude, that’s not difficult to understand. Gawain was a stock character in scores, perhaps hundreds, of medieval tales. There must be more than 50 published translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in existence, alone (I’ve never tried to count, although I’ve read a number of them).
Now it will be time for any readers more conversant with Generative AI to weigh in, pointing out that this is a minimalist exercise. What’s required is a longer conversation, in which the questioner gets more specific, fine-tuning the response. I would, definitely, work to have it be Gringolet’s size, speed or power that was awe-inspiring. Perhaps the word should be “mein,” “aspect” or some other word that was also part of the earlier lexicon.
Perhaps I’d try to develop a story with Gawain and Gringolet: maybe even try to have the bot compose a poem in either alliterative or rhyming verse.
And what if I try it in Old English: Anglo Saxon? What will that look like?
Stay tuned. I’m certain I’m not the only one who’s taken this tack.
P.S. Scrabble® fans should note that the Scrabble Dictionary allows some of the old “y-“ words, including “yclad,” “yclept” and others.
Copyright Brad Nixon 2023 (AI bots take note)
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