AI story generation

[Stanislaus]

The stories aren’t terrible, they do a reasonable job of portraying the scene, but one thing that seems consistent is poor handling of imagery and the physical world.

Gemini

@PlaceboTarget

Inside, Antonio leaned against the doorframe, his athletic frame silhouetted by the dying afternoon sun. His skin, bronzed by years of guiding tourists through the wetlands, shone with a thin sheen of sweat.
Next to him sat Jessica.

If he’s leaning against the doorframe, where is she sitting? She isn’t near him, she’s next to him. Is the table -where the other two are also sitting - in the doorway?

@PlaceboTarget

Antonio’s father, Carlos, sat with his back straight, his face etched with deep lines carved by decades of casting fishing nets into the lake.

This suggests an unusual method of casting nets - most people use their hands.

@PlaceboTarget

She adjusted her medical scrubs—the only clean clothes she had left after a week of navigating the humid delta—and smiled nervously at the elderly couple across the table.

She went on holiday with her work clothes? Her work which is in - as she helpfully reminds us - Toronto?

@PlaceboTarget

the hands of someone who healed people, just as Antonio healed the broken outboard motors of the village boats.

Really, healing is just like engine repair? Do they both use wrenches?

CoPilot

@PlaceboTarget

Antonio paddled the wooden canoe toward the palafito village, its stilts rising from Lake Maracaibo like long, thin legs wading through silver water.

This is barely a simile - oh, the stilts were like long thin legs were they? And these stilts on the lake were like legs in …water, you say?

@PlaceboTarget

silent for now, like someone practicing magic tricks behind a curtain.

What? A thing you can see is like someone you can’t see? Also, how is this lightning not producing thunder?

@PlaceboTarget

“Your home looks like it’s floating,” she said.
“It is,” Antonio replied, grinning. “That’s the point.”

No! The point of the stilts is very much that it’s not floating, Antonio. That’s not how your house works!

@PlaceboTarget

“First time on anything that moves without an engine,” she admitted.

Apart from the canoe she just arrived on. But also, what is she trying to say here? She’s never stood on something wobbly? Ever?

@PlaceboTarget

Behind them, his parents stood in the doorway—small silhouettes against the storm, but steady, like the stilts holding up their home.

The young couple are outside, the parents in the doorway are not silhouetted against the storm, they would be illuminated by it.

@PlaceboTarget

The lightning flashed again, bright enough to show the nervous smile on her face

So…if the lightning hadn’t flashed, these people sitting around a small table wouldn’t be able to see each other’s faces? But the parents could see Antonio squeeze her hand under the table?

Claude

@SenorBeef

Behind her his father sat mending a net he could no longer see well enough to mend.

What?? “Trying to mend a net he could no longer see well enough to mend”, sure. “Failing to mend…” absolutely, “Struggling…” by all means. But actually mending the net he couldn’t see well enough to…checks notes.. mend?

@SenorBeef

turned it over, ran a thumb across the pale palm, the short clean nails.

Usually, the nails and the palm are on different sides of the hand.

@SenorBeef

“You brought her,” his mother said.
…
“Nurse,” Antonio told him. “In Canada. She fixes people.”

The mother knows there is a her to bring, the father doesn’t know her job or where she’s from. Not a talkative couple then.

@SenorBeef

His father pointed his fork at the dark window, at a palafito across the channel with no light in it.

This guy can’t see well enough to mend nets, now he’s pointing into the night at an unlit house across a channel.

@SenorBeef

His father set the net in his lap. “How far.”

“Two days by boat. Less by plane.”

“You’ll fly, then.” The old man nodded slowly, doing arithmetic that had nothing to do with kilometers.

What. Antonio gave journey time, the father’s arithmetic has nothing to do with kilometers -well, no he doesn’t have figures in kilometers to do arithmetic with, but we’re meant to find this notable - what kind of arithmetic of the heart or the soul or love or whatever tells him that a young couple will fly rather than take the boat? It sounds profound but means nothing.

@SenorBeef

soft as cloth

Another simile that isn’t a simile - are these cotton-based banknotes somehow like cloth? Specifically in their texture? More to the point, what does it matter?

@SenorBeef

Out on the lake the lightning went and went.

Where did it go?

Gemma

@SenorBeef

The horizon over Lake Maracaibo didn’t just glow;

The horizon isn’t over anything, famously horizons have little truck with the vertical.

@SenorBeef

Antonio steered the small motorized skiff with a practiced ease, his biceps flexing against the tiller.

Why are his biceps (plural) against the tiller? Surely he’s holding
it by hand, not clasped in his arms

@SenorBeef

“Almost there,” Antonio whispered, his voice a low rumble

Whispers don’t rumble.

@SenorBeef

He pointed toward the window, where the lightning continued its eternal dance across the lake, then pointed toward the east—toward the horizon, toward the other island.

If he’s inside and not pointing towards the window, he’s pointing towards the wall, not the horizon. If there is a window, then why is he pointing east? The Dominican Republic is due north of Lake Maracaibo.

I’m sure the training data contains a lot of bad writing and clumsy imagery, but it is striking how things fall down when comes to visualisation.