Behind the scenes of the travel diary of an AI
Discover why we created the AI blogger project and what we learned in the process
“...But…it’s funny?”
“Yeah”
“And it makes sense?”
“Yeah”
“But…did it like…copy this from somewhere?”
“No. It’s original. It actually wrote this”
…that was the conversation between me and my brother, Jack, the first time he showed me text written by AI.
After a few moments of excited jumping around (me) and meticulous research (Jack) we came to the conclusion that we could, and definitely should, use this technology for a new creative project. And that is what we did.
Why and how we created the travel diary of an AI
We were in the post-lockdown limbo where we were allowed to leave the house, but not really…do anything. And traveling abroad was still pretty much out of the question. Our curiosity about the new technology and desire for a new creative input drove the project.
We knew that we wanted to train the AI to write in a specific style. And for that we needed a set of content – one large enough and varied enough to work as a training data set. There is an abundance of high-quality travel articles online, so travel blogging worked on a practical level.
We both love to travel and I usually draw and write about places that I visit. AI meant we could explore new places without leaving the apartment.
Jack used Hugging Face transformers (APIs that allow you to download and develop pre-trained AI models) to fine-tune our AI writer. He trained the model on a general set of travel articles and then would do further training on articles about a specific location, depending on where we wanted to go next.
We tested out various prompts, generated multiple text samples, and then selected the most coherent and interesting sections to create blog posts. As far as possible, we kept the generated paragraphs intact and avoided editing the pieces much.
Once we’d generated a full post, I created illustrations for each section, based on the AI-written text.
What we learned about our AI travel blogger
It’s here for a good time
From getting drunk at the hotel bar in Rio, to having a seemingly psychedelic experience in Seville, to attending a week-long party in Reykjavik, it seems our AI is a bit of a party animal. This is because of the probabilistic nature of the AI.
Based on the texts it's been trained on, it continues the prompts with what it statistically expects to happen. For example, it might finish the phrase "I sat on a " with "chair" because that's how that phrase usually ends. Our training set of travel blogs often includes accounts of eating, drinking, and having awe-inspiring experiences, so it makes sense for the AI to write about them.
Sometimes it gets stuck
None of the samples were fully coherent, so we combined sections from different samples. Sometimes the generator would appear to get stuck in a loop and repeat the same phrases over and over.
Jack managed to reduce these repetition loops by “altering the temperature or reducing the number of training epochs”. In other words, controlling how randomly the AI operates.
The higher the 'temperature' you set, the more inventive and random the AI is. A low temperature gives you a more 'normal' text but risks looping. To generate an interesting and varied text, but one that follows language patterns enough to make sense, you have to find a balance between the two.
It has a fast and loose relationship with reality.
The AI-generated real-sounding, totally made-up quotes, facts, and people.
Seville is the second most visited city in Spain, after Barcelona. The city is known for the best street art in Europe and world-famous food places.
“Iceland is like a fairy tale,” says Sigrid, a former Icelandic national sports reporter for ESPN. “It’s a big country and there are many things you can see, but it’s also not like it’s isolated. “I think that’s why it still gets visitors. It’s all about the magic of the place.”
“I don’t want to go back,” says Ana, a 32-year-old woman with a bright smile. She holds the bottle of limes in her hands. “I don’t want to go back,” she says. For Rio and the world, the city is a city of hope.
I feel that time is rushing by. It’s almost midnight. I must go home, because María is getting ready for the next day. I find myself at a restaurant in Seville where the waiter tells me there’s a very special party. “You have to come with me” says Ana. “We have to go with the waiter and the guests.” “I just want to go home,” says María. “I want to go home with Ana and the waiter.”
Whilst these fabrications are entertaining, it means the posts are not a reliable guidebook.