A family matter required some unexpected travel away this week. Mark has at least mastered answering his mobile phone at last but expecting him to link to Messenger or texts was a step too far with my speedy departure. I deputised Our Zach (our relatively young gardener, for those of you new to this site – when I say ‘relatively young’, I mean a generation younger than Mark, me and Our Lloyd) to relay messages via Messenger. It yielded an unexpected delight.
As background, I do not lead a life dogged by a sense of failure but one of my nagging regrets has been that, despite 30 years of published garden writing, I have never written an entire book. I have two partially written on my computer and I had plans but they have never been completed. After feeling it weighing on my shoulders, I decided that maybe my skills lay in shorter articles in the 700 to 1200 word length range and that is okay. Maybe I don’t have an entire book in me waiting to be written and published. Or maybe I just don’t have a publisher.
No matter. It seems that I will go down in history as a published author, at least according to artificial intelligence. Zach messaged me the following:
I was searching for you on messenger and the Ai feature thought I just wanted to know about you. Anyway this is what it said:
I laughed. Zach laughed. We all laughed. Four books! Apparently.
This spurred me on to try something I had been intending to do – ask Chat GPT to write something in my writing style on a topic in which I have some expertise. It took maybe 20 seconds to come up with its reply. I am not going to list the errors; the omissions are rather more important. It doesn’t once mention Felix or Mark by name, nor does it mention their pioneering work in breeding red magnolias or the international awards that have followed. Aotearoa New Zealand does not get a mention. It takes the generic and unrelated info on pest management from other places.
What reassured me most as a writer is that it failed entirely to capture my writing style. It reads like a generic promotional blurb. There is no danger of me resorting to using artificial intelligence on this site which I control and which is near and dear to my heart.
Being rural and of an older generation, AI may continue, in the first instance, to be the abbreviation for artificial insemination rather than artificial intelligence.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 
Yes, we’ll stick with the genuine article!
I was a bit relieved, I admit. I did only try one AI – ChatGPT – on the writing but it is no threat.
It dawned on me that there is a book to suit your preferred style – a history and description of the Jury plants. In essence it would be a collection of short articles as each plant would have its own separate account. There would be an introduction, background story, a who’s who etc but, essentially still simply a collection of short articles with a common thread. Soooooooo, get writing!
How kind of you to suggest this, Paddy. But I feel this is more like a Wikipedia entry. Or my website, where it already sits.
With your personal input, it would read very well I think. So, gather your website material, edit, collate and publish!
I’ve seen other bloggers try this too with their writing. Generally it sounded like a travel brochure or real estate ad, quite unlike their voice. We need authentic voices out there amid the nonsense.
I assume AI will improve but at this stage, it is no replacement for the human voice. And, by very definition, it can not be original.
BRAVO, exactly!!
Ho, ho, ho! Having had a 50 year career in Information Technology I know that the more complex software has become, the more error-prone it is. AI is error-prone software that was developed by fallible humans. I have very quickly learnt never to read the AI summary that comes at the start of every web search I do these days, as it is going to contain errors and inaccuracies. I now refer to it as AS (Artificial Stupidity). The other day I wondered what the life expectancy was in New Zealand once someone reaches 80. The AI summary told me it was another 11.3 years for men and 18.6 (I think) for women. It went on to tell me (as if I couldn’t work it out for myself) that meant an 80 year old man could expect to live to 91.3 years and an 80 year old woman could live to…91.3 years! It couldn’t even correctly add figures that it had obtained. Who knows whether it had obtained the correct figures in the first place. So, I am very glad that all future posts by Abbie Jury will indeed be by Abbie Jury. Thank you Abbie.
Well if AI, or AS, can’t even add, I don’t think I have too much to worry about! Thanks Tim..
I’m quite shocked at how bland the AI article is. You could substitute quite a few names of shrubs/trees for its wishy-washy description of “Jury magnolias” and it would be equally meaningless. An utterly useless “article” that gives no information and no pleasure in reading. Rock on, Abbie (the real one)!
I was underwhelmed by it. I expected more of AI than that.
IT’s an “asinine imitator” & not a very good one.