Spent $40 on a plot twist generator and got absolute gibberish

I was stuck on how to end a short story last month so I tried one of those AI writing prompt tools. Paid 40 bucks for a subscription and it spat out stuff like "the dog turned out to be the real father all along." Made no sense at all. Has anyone actually gotten something usable from those paid tools or is it all just random word salad?

3 comments

3 Comments

evan_davis9d ago

I tried the same tool last month for a sci-fi story and got something about "the time machine was actually powered by the neighbor's grudge." After tweaking the inputs a few times and adding more specific characters/places, it actually gave me a solid twist about a stolen identity that I kept in the final draft. Most of those generators are junk unless you feed them really detailed starting material, they need a lot of handholding to not be total nonsense.

harpercampbell9d ago

Doesn't that kind of apply to most things though? I've noticed the same thing with recipe blogs. If you just throw random pantry stuff at them you get something weird, but if you actually tell it what you have and what you like it pulls together a decent meal. Same with those AI image things people mess with. Give it a vague prompt like "a dog" and you get some nightmare creature. But type out "a golden retriever sitting on a beach at sunset wearing sunglasses" and it looks pretty good. It's like the whole world works better when you take the time to be specific about what you want. People just expect these tools to read their mind and get mad when they don't.

kellygrant9d ago

Question whether the recipe comparison is even that deep, @harpercampbell