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I was sent a photo of a page from a book with a great piece of writing. He didn't know the book. I ocr'd the page and pasted it into ChatGPT. It lead me on a

I was sent a photo of a page from a book with a great piece of writing. He didn't know the book. I ocr'd the page and pasted it into ChatGPT. It lead me on a merry dance where it started unequivocally that it was a book it couldn't have been. It then started making up books from similar authors. Every time I said, 'there is no such book', it appologised and then made up a new book. It was like talking to a salesman, trying to bullshit it's way through a pitch. I put a short piece of it into Google books and it found it! I asked ChatGPT about the actual book and it claimed to know it! It was a book called Blood Knots by Luke Jennings. I bought it, and before I read it I saw the friend who sent me the excerpt, and gave it to him. A year later I saw the same book, shelf soiled, in an independent store. It was worth the wait, it was a great read. I also saw David Allen Green (author of the above) ask his question on Bluesky on my first day using it. Somehow I feel part of this story

hypercube33 2y ago
I typed a reply and deleted it but I've had the same experience. Also you don't need to OCR with the phone app typically you can snap a picture. Beyond books, it's really awesome at finding movies even with super weird things I happen to remember - I assume it's trained on quotes, scripts and maybe fan knowledge from IMDb or something. Song lyrics it did the same thing. yes it was for a niche melodeath metal song but the lyrics are very distinct and Google/bing can't seem to do exact string searches anymore but GPT was confidently incorrect on what band it was.
jccalhoun 2y ago
I had a similar experience with OpenAI's Dall-e. I told it to make an image about public speaking without a microphone. It made one with a micrphone. I said, "that has a microphone in it. I don't want anything resembling a microphone" and it gave me an image of a microphone surrounded by a star of david that said public speaking no microphone.

hypercube33 2y ago

I typed a reply and deleted it but I've had the same experience. Also you don't need to OCR with the phone app typically you can snap a picture. Beyond books, it's really awesome at finding movies even with super weird things I happen to remember - I assume it's trained on quotes, scripts and maybe fan knowledge from IMDb or something. Song lyrics it did the same thing. yes it was for a niche melodeath metal song but the lyrics are very distinct and Google/bing can't seem to do exact string searches anymore but GPT was confidently incorrect on what band it was.

jccalhoun 2y ago

I had a similar experience with OpenAI's Dall-e. I told it to make an image about public speaking without a microphone. It made one with a micrphone. I said, "that has a microphone in it. I don't want anything resembling a microphone" and it gave me an image of a microphone surrounded by a star of david that said public speaking no microphone.