The New River

Journal of Electronic Literature and Digital Art

“Telepathic Musings of Self-Identified Artificial Intelligence Creatures”

By Andy DiLallo

“Telepathic Musings of Self-Identified Artificial Intelligence Creatures” is an interactive video that explores the thoughts and experiences of two AI creatures, a fish and a bird. GPT-3, a machine learning model trained on internet data, generated the creatures’ monologue text, which a text-to-speech translator vocalizes. The animation questions the boundaries of reality and identity in the digital age, where machines can fluidly assume a variety of perspectives with the slightest of prompts. On the one hand, there’s alarming potential here, yet also a beauty in this capacity to shapeshift. This dilemma is unavoidable in our daily lives, and relationships with non-human technological entities require new forms of listening and exploration. In approaching this digital present deliberately, can we make space for a reinvention of what it means to be human?

Instructions

Scan the lefthand QR code with a mobile phone to bring the creatures and their stories to life. Doing so will open a website that accesses the camera on your phone. Once you allow access, point the camera at the video. Touch your screen each time the AR bird or fish appears to play their monologue through the phone speakers, rotate, and scale the models.