Hi ,
Can you guess the title of the following film/book?
An innocent man is wrongfully imprisoned for a serious crime. He then spends years of his life escaping from
prison, before emerging back into the world, transformed by his experiences and determined to live a very different life.
The movie I have in mind is The Shawshank Redemption, but I've also described the first half of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Shawshank is essential just Stephen King's "remix" of Monte Cristo (just as Salem's Lot is King's remix of Dracula and Needful Things is King's Something Wicked This Way Comes).
Yet, to describe The Shawshank Redemption as nothing more than a remix of a French classic is unfair to King. In writing The
Shawshank Redemption, King took raw materials provided by Alexandre Dumas (who, himself, was no stranger to the remix) and made them his own.
It is because of King's creativity that The Shawshank Redemption is a classic, not because of anything King "borrowed" from Dumas.
As friend-of-the-list Rod Aparicio often points out: "everything's already been said."
Here's the thing...
Generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, are essentially just remix engines. They take material that has already been said and mash it up into something new.
Yet, ChatGPT won't make you the next Stephen King.
It's not what goes into a piece of work
that creates greatness, it's the creativity - which only humans can add.
With AI making remixes easier to create than ever before, now is the time when creativity matters the most.
Talk again soon,
Dr Genevieve Hayes.
