Artificial intelligence with a pen
Review: conversation with Bing's Copilot, 31/3/2024.
The progress of artificial generative intelligence, especially in the writing field, is continuous. Just last year, we witnessed it with a small creative experiment with Perplexity.
This time, we asked Copilot, implemented on Microsoft's Bing search engine, to try its hand at a real-life case: a short description in Italian of our book Parole di una star riluttante, centred on the work of Dolores O'Riordan, yet the first monography ever on the Irish singer.
A couple of seconds, id est the time to process all the articles and reviews published on the web on the subject, and Copilot came up with a short, clean text; maybe sometimes a little superficial (not having the contents of the volume at hand), but which would nevertheless make more than one journalist envious.
We quote it below translated in English.
« The book Parole di una star riluttante (id est Words of a Reluctant Star) by Daniele Lucchini is a work that sheds light on the extraordinary figure of Dolores O'Riordan, the voice of the Cranberries. Published by Arcana Edizioni, this book does not provide anecdotes or gossip, but allows us to immerse ourselves in the world of Dolores, an atypical, fragile and brilliant figure.
The author demonstrates a remarkable lucidity and acumen right from the preface. He states that more than biographical data, the counting of years and the interventions of critics and the public, what defines an author are first and foremost the lyrics. In the lyrics, if you read them well, if you peek behind the succession of letters, rhymes and assonances, you can find the whole world of the artist, even (especially) the parts hidden from the outside world or from herself.
The book explores the origins of The Cranberries and plunges us into the deep provincial air that the band breathed at the beginning of their career. The first meeting between Dolores and the band was momentous: they were confronted by a petite, chubby girl dressed in a voluminous pink tracksuit and carrying a midi keyboard under her arm. Perhaps they would send her back, except that the next bus to her village was only a few hours away. All that remained was to put her to the test.
The work follows a precise pattern: all the album setlists are dissected and analysed, exposing the main theme and foregrounding the most illustrative, lyrically powerful excerpts in the original version with accompanying translation. An enormous job, which only a fan (before being a writer) could carry out.
Closing the last page, it becomes clear that the book's subtitle could not have been better: words of a reluctant star. A fragile, divided soul, unfit for the circus into which she has been catapulted, somewhat willingly and somewhat unwillingly. »
Image: conversation with Hotpot.ai, 1/4/2024.