Google’s new prototype AI tool does the writing for you, Wordcraft is a ‘magic text editor’ meant to inspire writers
Remember that time Google showed off its artificial intelligence prowess by demoing conversations with Pluto and a paper airplane? That was powered by LaMDA, one of Google’s latest-generation conversational AI models. Now, Google’s using LaMDA to build Wordcraft, a prototype writing tool that can help creative writers craft new stories.
AI-powered writing tools aren’t new. Chances are you’ve heard of Grammarly or copywriting tools like Jasper. What makes Wordcraft a bit different is that it’s framed as a means to help create fictional work. Google describes it as a sort of “text editor with purpose” built into a web-based word processor. Users can prompt Wordcraft to rewrite phrases or direct it to make a sentence funnier. It can also describe objects if asked or generate prompts. In a nutshell, it’s sort of like wrapping an editor and writing partner into a single AI tool.
GIF of Wordcraft in action
How Wordcraft... crafts Image: Google
To test Wordcraft, Google created a workshop with 13 professional writers to see how well the prototype worked. While the writers seemed to appreciate Wordcraft as a way to spark new ideas, they unanimously agreed the tool wasn’t going to replace authors anytime soon. For starters, the tool wasn’t great at sticking to a narrative style and produced average or cliched writing. It also stuck to tried-and-true tropes while also steering clear of “mean” characters.
“One clear finding was that using LaMDA to write full stories is a dead end. It’s a much more effective tool when it’s used to add spice,” Douglas Eck, senior research director at Google Research, said at the AI@ event.
The Great Fiction of AI
Obviously, any prototype has kinks to work out. It’s also hard to fully grasp what using an AI-powered creative writing tool is like. So I was curious to see a demo of it firsthand at Google’s AI@ event.
I started by giving Wordcraft the prompt “penguins swimming.” It then generated a few different story ideas, and because I love baby animals, I went with a mother penguin sitting on her eggs. From there, I could tell Wordcraft to either continue the story, add another prompt, or talk to a chatbot for more ideas. I opted to highlight the “eggs” and have Wordcraft offer more description.
The results were all sorts of surreal — one described the eggs as having a leathery texture, but I went with the option where they were the size of grapefruits and covered in downy feathers. (Never mind the fact that eggs covered in feathers aren’t really a thing.) I won’t go into every prompt I tried out, but I did at one point have Wordcraft shorten a lengthy continuation into a single sentence, as well as had the chatbot generate some conflict (hence, the seal eating mama penguin’s babies).
Ultimately, it’s as Eck said. After the demo, I couldn’t really picture writing a full story this way, but it was a neat way to generate ideas. The final product wouldn’t ever work on its own — I’d be too embarrassed to even put it on AO3 as a March of the Penguins fanfic. But I could take the overall idea — a mama penguin fighting off a seal to save her eggs — and rewrite the text into a more enjoyable, less robotic story.
Wordcraft is clearly still in the experimental stage. That said, the prototype was fun to use, even if I was mostly trying to see how absurd I could get with a single prompt. If you’re curious, you can check out nine stories that came out of the Wordcraft Writers’ Workshop here. They’re pretty wild.
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Related #tags- #google #wordcraft #LAMDA #magictexteditor #prototypingtool #writersworkshop
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