Background information
"Fata Deum": How much potential is there in the new simulation of the gods?
by Kim Muntinga
How I was replaced by a text bot
3.10.2022
Translation: machine translated
As we all know, artificial intelligence has made an enormous leap in recent years. It is now possible to generate texts completely automatically - and with astonishingly good results. This article is about exactly this topic: the readability of AI-generated texts and their error rates.
The future has already begun. That's a hackneyed introduction and, strictly speaking, just plain wrong, but actually perfect for a post that deals with automatic text generation. Because the future of text generation is now, and it not infrequently generates hackneyed content.
Text generation is a process in which computers use artificial intelligence to create texts. These texts can have an informative, entertaining or even factual purpose. In many cases, the generated texts are read by humans and do not recognise that they originate from a computer.
Current text generation techniques are capable of producing readable and grammatically correct texts. The results range from quite passable to impressively good. In many cases, however, the texts are not yet perfect and there are signs that they came from a computer.
Some examples of errors that can occur during text generation are illogical sentence structures, missing words or repeated words. These errors will become less and less common in the future as the technology evolves.
Text generation can already be used usefully for a variety of applications. Some examples are the creation of product descriptions, the generation of search engine results, or the creation of news articles.
In the future, text generation will become more and more powerful and even more demanding tasks will be taken over by computers. So it is quite conceivable that in the future novels or poems will also be written by computers.
Although text generation is already very powerful, the results are not yet perfect. There are still signs that a text came from a computer. In the future, however, the technology will be developed further and the results will become better and better. So it is quite conceivable that in the future there will be hardly any differences z
.
Stop. Stop. That's not the way to do it
I'm replacing the bot that replaced me
At this point I, the human David Lee, must take over again. You see, the text you've read this far was written by the artificial intelligence Jasper. Except for the title and the very first paragraph in the text. Even the lead, i.e. the introduction in slightly larger type, was written by Jasper.
I can't use Jasper for this.
I can get Jasper to be more specific with some experimentation. But then the tool starts asserting some nonsense completely wildly.
Making of
Jasper offers a wizard for longer articles. The first thing I have to do is describe the content I want. I specified the following:
An exciting article about text generation using artificial intelligence. Current state of the art: readability, errors. The article aims to clarify, with examples, the question of whether AI-generated texts appear human or are recognisable as such. The article shall give an outlook on the future and meaningful applications of text generation.
Jasper suggests possible titles to me in response. Alternatively, I can choose one of my own, which I did in view of Jasper's dull suggestions. The same procedure with the introduction; here I took one of Jasper's suggestions.
Then Jasper generates the text. As with a T-shirt, you can choose between sizes S, M and L. The above was the L version. The above was the L version. As long as Jasper still has some ideas about the topic, you can expand the text in small steps. The longer the text, the more repetitions there will be, sometimes Jasper repeats himself word for word.
If I take my own title as a starting point, Jasper creates a completely different text. Namely, not a journalistic contribution, but a narrative.
Jasper as novelist
This piques my interest. Can the text generator tell a story like a writer? That would be in a completely different league from dry non-fiction texts.
Jasper offers a novel.
Jasper offers a large number of templates for different purposes. Depending on whether you want to make a blog post, a product description, a video description or whatever. One of the templates is called "Creative Story". Let's see what that comes up with. I'll enter the following as a storyline:
The brilliant and mad scientist Elon Frankenberg is working on a human-like robot. When the robot starts talking, things get out of hand.
Jasper forges the following story from this.
The content is completely moronic. The fact that the professor "programmed the robot with his own blood" is the least of it.
However, the chaos is glossed over by a pleasing narrative style. It is therefore not very noticeable on a cursory read-through. Jasper imitates the tone of a suspenseful story well. There is a certain drama in it, and the whole thing reads entertainingly. Linguistically, there are a few imprecisions, but overall the text quality is surprisingly good. Especially considering the fact that Jasper was trained mainly in English.
Jasper can (badly) improve texts
Among many other features, Jasper also wants to be able to improve my texts. A steep claim. So let's see what you can do and improve the first paragraph of my post about AI image generation StableDiffusion!
I would have a lot to say about the "improvement" by Jasper, but I'll shut up now - after all, as the author of the original text, I am biased. Judge for yourself.
There are, however, texts that actually get better when ground through the AI mill. For example, a paragraph from this Dyson advert. That's one of the few posts on our site that's actually manufacturer advertising - you'll recognise it by the "advertorial" notation.
The passage contains two grammatical errors ("your effort" instead of "your effort" and "remember" instead of "reminded") and also stylistically does not play in the Champions League. More like Promotion League. This is what Jasper makes of it:
The mistakes are gone, stylistically it actually seems better to me. Only the ending is a bit questionable - it sounds as if cold hands are much better than warm ones. The example confirms the previous impression: stylistically Jasper has a lot going for him, but not in terms of content.
Conclusion: Jasper has nothing to say, but says it well
Linguistically, Jasper is surprisingly good. Not only does the tool produce correct German sentences - they are also linked in such a way that the text reads smoothly. Jasper is capable of writing a text in a consistent style throughout and implementing stylistic guidelines.
Content, on the other hand: Missing. Jasper simply has nothing exciting to say. Because Jasper knows nothing. It pieces together scraps of content that in all likelihood belong together. This results in generally valid platitudes, constant repetitions or simply nonsense. But if I have to specify the content completely, I might as well write the text myself.
Jasper is considered one of the most advanced tools of its kind. Similar to translation tools, it is not intended to replace humans completely, but to provide the preliminary work - the human then revises the result produced by the AI. However, as long as this does not improve with the content, the benefits for many areas of application will remain modest. For the time being, journalists and writers need not fear being replaced by a bot.
-- ERROR: end of file
David Lee
Senior Editor
David.Lee@digitecgalaxus.chMy interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.
Computing
Follow topics and stay updated on your areas of interest
Background information
Interesting facts about products, behind-the-scenes looks at manufacturers and deep-dives on interesting people.
Show all
