Where does one draw the line with using AI to create art?  A court ruled AI art could not be copyrighted, but what about AI assisted art?  Is there a percentage where the sin overtakes the whole endeavor?  If I painted a fifty foot long mural and glued a stamp-sized print of AI art to it, is the mural’s entire design rendered public domain?

What if the art is writing?  I was recently trying to come up with an idea for a story and not liking anything that came to mind, so I had a convo with chatgpt about it.  At what point in this conversation does the writing become my creation, or does the fact it started like this invalidate the entire project – even if I wrote a million words off the concept in iambic pentameter, all from my own brain?

GAS:
put this plot outline into a format you can easily understand, short phrases and simple formatting:  (here I posted a four act gothic plot outline mashed up with save-the-cat screenplay bits)

ChatGPT:
Act 1: Rise from Obscurity
Opening Image / Character is not Valued
Tone and concept established…  (it responded competently)

GAS:
list seven ideas for sources of supernatural power that come at a terrible cost

ChatGPT:

• Blood Pact with a Demon
  Power:  Grants immense strength, magical abilities, or immortality.
  Cost:  Slowly consumes the user’s soul, leading to eventual damnation or loss of humanity.
• Cursed Artifact
  Power:  Bestows knowledge, wealth, or abilities.
  Cost:  The artifact demands a toll (e.g., harming loved ones, madness, or eternal servitude).
• Forbidden Knowledge
  Power:  Unlocks hidden truths, magic, or control over reality.
  Cost:  Warps the mind, creating paranoia, hallucinations, or inability to return to normal life.
• Ancestral Spirit Possession
  Power:  Access to ancestral wisdom, battle prowess, or supernatural senses.
  Cost:  The spirit takes control intermittently, eroding the user’s autonomy.
• Blood Magic or Life Sacrifice
  Power:  Casts powerful spells or grants regenerative abilities.
  Cost:  Requires offering the life force of others—or the user’s own lifespan is drastically shortened.
• Cosmic Entity Bargain
  Power:  Grants the ability to manipulate time, space, or destiny.
  Cost:  Reality becomes distorted; the entity’s influence seeps into the user’s life, erasing relationships or memories.
• Monster Transformation
  Power:  Unparalleled physical prowess, healing, or shapeshifting.
  Cost:  Gradual loss of humanity, uncontrollable urges, or permanent disfigurement.

GAS:
list seven variations on the concept of a vampire, a noble class that uses supernatural power to oppress the people, but not literal blood drinking

ChatGPT:

• Dream Eaters
  Feed on the dreams and ambitions of the people, leaving their victims apathetic and without hope.
  Use stolen creativity to maintain their grandeur and invent new ways to control society.
• Soul Harvesters
  Extract fragments of souls from the populace, weakening their victims’ vitality and willpower.
  Hoard soul energy to maintain eternal youth, power, or invincibility.
• Emotion Leeches
  Drain intense emotions (joy, love, anger) from others, leaving them numb and subservient.
  Use this energy to amplify their charisma and influence, manipulating the masses.
• Shadow Lords
  Absorb the shadows or “life essence” of others, which leaves victims sickly and feeble.
  Their stolen power allows them to control light and darkness, creating fearsome displays of authority.
• Pain Feeders
  Draw strength from the suffering and despair of the oppressed, perpetuating violence and hardship.
  Use this energy to fuel supernatural resilience and cruelty, ensuring their dominance.
• Memory Thieves
  Steal memories and identities from their subjects, erasing rebellion and rewriting history.
  Use the knowledge gained to maintain a perfect grip on power while ensuring no one remembers life before their rule.
• Time Parasites
  Drain years of life from their subjects, shortening lifespans in exchange for their own longevity.
  Create an illusion of fairness by taxing the life of the poor while claiming eternal reign as divine justice.

GAS:
in bloodborne the healing church uses cursed blood from the elder gods to heal people, gaining favor, but the blood eventually turns people into monsters, and it ushers in an eternal inquisition as those that became beasts are being hunted.  in elden ring, outer gods have bred with humans to create a noble class with a supernatural power of “the grace of gold,” but their might causes their power struggles to rip up the world itself. list seven similar ideas, but try to make them as different and distinctive as possible.

ChatGPT:

• The Whispering Veil
  A noble caste gains supernatural wisdom by communing with an ethereal “Veil” that reveals hidden truths.
  Over time, prolonged exposure causes their bodies to fragment into translucent, ghostly forms, rendering them unrecognizable.
  Their attempts to rule through divine knowledge breed paranoia and civil wars, as they suspect each other of treachery.
• The Forge of Embers
  A sacred forge grants its wielders the ability to create living weapons infused with fire and metal, capable of reshaping reality itself.
  However, using the forge binds their souls to the weapons they create, slowly transforming them into inanimate, mindless tools of war.
  The world becomes a desolate battlefield as these cursed weapons perpetuate endless conflict, with no one left to wield them.
• The Harvested Horizon
  Nobles consume fragments of a celestial being’s body that fell to earth, granting them the ability to terraform land and summon crops.
  Overuse of this power corrodes the natural environment, creating barren wastelands and causing the nobles to mutate into colossal, immobile “roots” that consume all life.
  The oppressed are forced to fight both their parasitic overlords and the spreading desolation.
• The Starbinders’ Oath
  A celestial pact grants nobles the ability to manipulate the heavens, altering seasons, weather, and even time.
  Their bond with the stars, however, slowly pulls them out of sync with reality, turning them into disembodied echoes incapable of understanding human suffering.
  Their unfeeling interference fractures the world’s timeline, plunging the realm into cyclical chaos.
• The Choir of Depths
  Nobles receive their powers by harmonizing with a cosmic “Song of Creation,” which grants them the ability to reshape matter and minds.
  Singing the Song too often causes the nobles to lose their individuality, merging into a horrifying, ever-growing chorus of flesh and voices.
  Their subjects live in terror of being assimilated into the Choir, even as they revere the beauty of its creations.
• The Thorned Crown
  Nobles achieve dominion by donning crowns grown from a mystical tree that connects to the collective lifeforce of their subjects.
  The crowns grant immense power but drive the wearers mad with visions of every subject’s pain and suffering.
  As the nobles succumb to insanity, the tree begins consuming the people it was meant to sustain, leaving the land twisted and overgrown with carnivorous flora.
• The Light of Hollowing
  A radiant crystal buried beneath the earth empowers nobles with the ability to project light that heals wounds and invigorates armies.
  The light, however, siphons the emotions and humanity of everyone exposed to it, leaving the populace as emotionless husks.
  The nobles, desperate to retain control and their fading vitality, begin to drain one another, turning their court into a cannibalistic struggle for survival.

GAS:
take any three of those and make them Christmas themed.

ChatGPT:

• 1. The Choir of Frost
  Nobles attune themselves to a mystical “Caroling Frost,” a sacred hymn carried by the icy winds of a cursed winter.
  The song grants them control over the snow and cold, allowing them to create eternal winters and summon crystalline ice structures to awe and oppress their subjects.
  However, the more they sing the Frost’s melody, the more their voices freeze into hollow echoes, and their bodies become statues of living ice.  Over time, they merge into frozen monuments, incapable of thought or speech, yet still radiating the chilling hymn that numbs the hearts and spirits of the people.
  The world becomes locked in a perpetual winter, with frostbitten villagers whispering prayers to thaw the cursed song.
• 2. The Thorned Wreath
  Nobles gain power by donning enchanted holly wreaths said to be blessed by the Spirit of Winter Solstice.  The wreaths grant the ability to summon endless feasts, gifts, and celebrations, making the nobles beloved as symbols of holiday cheer.  Over time, the thorns on the wreaths grow inward, piercing deeper into their flesh and souls.  The more they indulge their power, the more they become driven by greed, feeding endlessly on the joy and warmth they create.
  As the wreaths take control, the nobles transform into monstrous “Yule Fiends,” evergreen hulks that spread cursed festivities, forcing villages into endless, lifeless celebrations where no one can leave or rest.
• 3. The Starbinders’ Noel
  Nobles form pacts with a celestial “Yuletide Star” that appears every winter, granting them the ability to summon miraculous lights and deliver blessings of warmth and hope to the people during the darkest nights.
  Each use of the Star’s power, however, draws them closer to its fiery essence, causing their bodies to burn with an inner light that they cannot extinguish.  Eventually, they become radiant, hollow shells, consumed by the Star’s endless hunger for devotion.
  As the nobles ascend into blazing constellations in the night sky, their subjects are forced to endure their light, which grows ever brighter and hotter, turning the joyous season into an unbearable, fiery trial.

GAS:
take the second one and make it into a sort of conspiracy situation, where the source of power is kept secret – some kind of lie makes it seem like something else, less a supernatural power than a more banal source of privilege.

ChatGPT:
The Thorned Wreath Conspiracy

The nobles appear to rule through mundane wealth and tradition, claiming their authority comes from ancestral ties and their ability to preserve the realm’s prosperity through seasonal festivities.  They maintain the illusion that their power stems from their role as caretakers of a sacred winter holiday—a benign, cultural privilege tied to generosity, feasting, and the supposed goodwill of their forebears.

In truth, the nobles’ grandeur and influence come from the Thorned Wreaths, enchanted relics hidden beneath their ostentatious holiday crowns.  Each wreath feeds on the warmth, joy, and hope of the common people, amplifying the nobles’ charisma and material abundance by siphoning life force during the season of celebration.  The public is told that the lavish feasts and seemingly endless gifts come from centuries of careful stewardship and family wealth, when in fact the wreaths are drawing vitality from the very people they claim to serve.

The wreaths grow thornier each year, the hidden barbs pressing into the nobles’ minds and hearts, warping their personalities.  While they are celebrated as benevolent lords of the season, they secretly become cold, calculating, and deeply paranoid.  The cost of this power remains hidden: villages sink into depression after each “festive season,” with the populace left drained of energy and hope, unable to rebel or question the system.

The conspiracy is tightly controlled.  A secret society of nobles, calling themselves The Keepers of the Holly, works tirelessly to suppress knowledge of the wreaths.  They stage elaborate holiday spectacles to distract the people, enforce the narrative of familial legacy, and ruthlessly silence anyone who comes too close to the truth.

However, cracks are beginning to show. Rumors spread of servants witnessing nobles removing their crowns, revealing twisted wreaths of holly beneath, their vines crawling into their skulls.  Commoners whisper about the increasing sterility of the land—fields that won’t grow crops, towns that never recover from the holiday season.  Meanwhile, a small resistance begins to uncover fragments of the truth, learning that the wreaths were not gifts of the Winter Solstice but ancient, cursed relics that the first nobles stole from the wilderness to gain their power.

The question is: if the wreaths are destroyed, will the nobles crumble into husks—or will the land itself, so dependent on their ill-gotten vitality, fall into ruin with them?

GAS:
a gang of street thieves does a heist on a noble, and at first it’s fun and games, but they fall prey to jealousy and betrayal.  ultimately one must use dark knowledge to vindicate himself, at a terrible cost.  how could this plot go?  a short summary.

ChatGPT:
A gang of street thieves targets a wealthy noble during a grand winter festival, believing the score to be easy and the spoils immense.  They infiltrate the noble’s lavish estate, stealing what appears to be mundane riches: gold, jewels, and an ornate holiday wreath.  The gang celebrates their success, reveling in their newfound wealth.  However, tensions rise as jealousy brews—one thief claims they deserve more for their role in the heist, while another begins to suspect the leader of withholding the best prizes.

Amid the infighting, strange events occur.  The stolen wreath exudes a sinister aura, and those near it feel their deepest insecurities amplified.  One thief, desperate to outshine the rest, secretly dons the wreath, unknowingly activating its cursed power.  They gain unnatural charisma and strength, but the wreath begins to twist their mind, driving them to betray the others.

The gang implodes in violence and paranoia.  The leader, framed for betrayal, is left for dead and abandoned by their comrades.  Desperate to clear their name and seek revenge, they consult a forbidden source: an old hermit who reveals the wreath’s dark truth—that it feeds on ambition and life force, granting power at a terrible cost.  To expose the traitor and vindicate himself, the leader uses the knowledge to claim the wreath’s power, sacrificing part of their humanity in the process.

In a climactic showdown, the leader confronts the corrupted former ally, now fully consumed by the wreath.  Though victorious, the leader realizes they have become just like the noble they robbed: a vessel for the wreath’s hunger.  With their gang destroyed and their soul tainted, they are left to wander, a hollow shell of their former self, carrying the weight of their choices into an uncertain future.

GAS:
remember the generic plot outline you helped me with before?  make your plot summary here fit into that outline.

ChatGPT:
Act 1: Rise from Obscurity
Opening Image / Character is not Valued
The gang of thieves struggles to survive in the shadow of the nobles, resenting the disparity between their lives and the wealth flaunted by the elite.  Their leader, though clever and ambitious, feels underestimated and unappreciated by their crew.
Incidental / Accidental Accomplishment (Catalyst)
During the winter festival, the gang pulls off an audacious heist, stealing gold, jewels, and an ornate wreath from a powerful noble…  (you get the idea.)

Humans are all recycling the same six story ideas ad infinitum and have been content with that for ages.  Don’t tell me the bot here is being less creative than five thousand romantasies about muscly dudes with big donks loving up on the normal girl who turned out to be the secret faerie queen.  Any one of these ideas could turn into successful commercial media, in the right / wrong hands.

Or can it?  There is that court precedent which could limit commercial application.  Well, doesn’t matter much to me.  Copyright law will never protect me from the deep pockets of corporations, regardless of whether I write my own shit or bot it.  The law exists solely for them.  Disney could copy-paste the entire history of this blog into Frozen 4 and I’d have to eat shit about it.

This is the world we live in.  As creative people, what will we do with it?

–

PS:  This is the post you can point to if you want to join in the AI version of the Satanic Panic, where saying anything neutral to positive about AI will have a gamergatesque mob braying at your door, calling into question the legitimacy of every piece of art you’ve ever made.  Act now while supplies last!