On my test of ChatGPT’s rewriting

Recently my friend Himadri got ChatGPT to “improve” his sentences (as a joke), which turned out to be shite, so I tested ChatGPT with my blog post “What makes a good screen adaptation?”.

This is the comment from ChatGPT: 

“Your piece already has strong ideas and a clear critical voice. The main improvements needed are conciion, rhythm, and sentence structure—many of the original sentences are overly long and repetitive. I’ve rewritten it to keep your tone and arguments while making the prose sharper, more fluid, and more polished.” 

Hello? The repetition is the point! 

Here is one paragraph from my blog post: 

“The 2022 Persuasion also seems to be an odd thing that is neither approach: perhaps I shouldn’t comment as I haven’t seen the whole film, but from what I have seen, it is neither a faithful adaptation, depicting the Regency era, nor an independent film with the story moved to the modern era; instead, Carrie Cracknell has characters of different skin colours wearing Regency costumes but speaking modern slang, and changes the character of Anne Elliot beyond recognition (it is perhaps aimed at the audience of Bridgerton).”

ChatGPT’s version: 

“The 2022 adaptation of Persuasion seems caught in a similarly awkward middle ground. I should admit that I have not seen the entire film, but from what I have seen, it appears undecided about what it wants to be. It is neither a faithful Regency adaptation nor a complete modern reimagining. Instead, Carrie Cracknell presents characters in Regency dress speaking contemporary slang, while Anne Elliot is altered almost beyond recognition. The film perhaps aims for the audience of Bridgerton, but the result feels conceptually muddled.”

The parenthesis is part of my style! I don’t even think I have a particularly strong authorial voice, but the new version is bland. 

Here’s my final paragraph: 

“And this is something lots of people don’t seem to understand: whenever someone criticises a film adaptation for misrepresenting or betraying the text, some people just say fidelity is unimportant and the film is its own work of art, but most of the time it isn’t—most of the time it doesn’t have enough strengths and originality, most of the time it doesn’t transcend its source material—all we’ve got is just a poor film that doesn’t quite transfer a great work of art onto the screen.”

This is ChatGPT’s version: 

“And this is what many people fail to understand when discussions about adaptations arise. Whenever someone criticises a film for betraying or misrepresenting its source, others immediately respond that fidelity does not matter because a film should stand as its own work of art. But most adaptations do not succeed as independent works either. Most lack the originality, vision, or artistic strength necessary to transcend their source material. Too often, what remains is simply an inferior film that fails to bring a great work of art convincingly to the screen.”

Where is the individual voice? The repetition is the point. The repetition is part of my style.  

I also fed ChatGPT my blog post “Jane Austen’s 250”. 

“In her four masterpieces—Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion—Jane Austen explores different kinds of love, different aspects, different angles. She adopts different tones. She uses different techniques. Pride and Prejudice for example is light, bright, and sparkling, with lots of dialogue. Mansfield Park is sombre, and she uses more layers and metaphors. Emma is where she masters the free indirect speech, blending the voice of the third-person narrator with the voice of the protagonist, colouring your perspective of the scene. Persuasion is autumnal, her warmest and most romantic novel. I say Austen is narrow—and in some sense, she is—but these four novels are all quite different. She is wonderful.”

What ChatGPT spat out: 

“In her four masterpieces—Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion—Austen explores different forms and dimensions of love. Each novel has its own tone, techniques, and emotional texture. Pride and Prejudice is light, sparkling, and full of lively dialogue. Mansfield Park is sombre, layered, and rich in symbolism. In Emma, Austen perfects free indirect discourse, blending the narrator’s voice with Emma’s own and subtly shaping the reader’s perception of events. Persuasion feels autumnal: her warmest, most wistful, and perhaps most romantic novel.

I sometimes say Austen is narrow—and in one sense, perhaps she is. Yet these four novels are remarkably different from one another in mood, structure, and vision. She is extraordinary.” 

Again, ChatGPT removes the repetition, removes the thing that makes me me. 

Over the past few months, I’ve been seeing more and more tweets that reek of ChatGPT (or whatever AI that people are using). The same blandness. The same soullessness. AI junkies don’t seem to understand that delegating writing to AI not only produces writings stripped of any individuality but also turns their brains to mush—for writing is thinking—and makes them gradually adopt that blandness and sound like an automaton even when they sit down and write something themselves. 

If anything, this experiment makes me want to spend more time and effort cultivating my own voice.