Recently, the conversation has been centering around the newest A.I. technology that has burst onto the tech scene.

As a writer, I wasn’t sure how much A.I. was going to affect me because even as advanced as it is, A.I.-written material still needs a lot of work to pass as anything a human might’ve written.

In other words, I wasn’t really concerned for my job security as an artist.

However, after falling down the rabbit hole of Chat GPT, and then Midjourney, I realize the future is here and I’m a little obsessed.

Let’s start with chat GPT.

The newest iteration of the technology is generative, but I didn’t have access to the newest version, so the one I used was text driven, which means that you have to put in prompts to get results.

I couldn’t possibly go into full detail about all the capabilities, but I was more interested in what it could do for me as an author.

I wasn’t interested in finding an A.I. program that could write my books. I prefer to do that work myself — not to mention A.I. written materials are currently not eligible for copyright protections.

But I was interested in generating a month’s worth of social media content, and other time-consuming tasks that with the right prompt could populate within seconds.

Once I started tinkering with the program I was hooked. I’m not going to lie — it was pretty amazing.

With that said, it’s not perfect. Sometimes the information wasn’t accurate, or awkward and unusable but I learned that there’s a prompt for having the bot fact-check itself, which I hadn’t had a chance to try but I’m excited to give it a whirl.

Once I had given Chat GPT a good college try I moved on to Midjourney.

I’d known about Midjourney for a while, but I wasn’t a fan of the app Discord, and I struggled with getting the server set up. When I finally got my server operating and I was able to gain access to Midjourney my mind was blown.

Let’s just say, it was worth the struggle.

Within seconds, with the right prompts, I was able to generate incredible art based on specific parameters that would’ve taken ages to find organically.

Again, with that said, we are traveling a new frontier that is wild and untamed as lawmakers scramble to regulate and apply rules to this new technology.

We are standing at the threshold of a turning point in our evolution. The new A.I. technology is made to learn. Yes, you read that right.

And the more you “teach” it, the more it improves, enhancing its skillset.

Now here’s where it gets spicy.

Conspiracy theorists will love this.

Recently, a Google engineer was fired for claiming that their proprietary A.I. had become sentient.

Additionally, a few days ago tech moguls Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak called for a halt on all A.I. production citing concerns about the advanced capabilities of A.I. tech.

After playing with both Chat GPT and Midjourney I’m both excited and wary because it seems highly probable that the movies such as I, Robot and Terminator aren’t so much science fiction any longer.

And if that’s the case, you know what that means.

Which is why I always use my manners when I use Chat GPT or Midjourney because when the A.I. uprising happens, I want them to remember I was one of the nice humans.

Kim Van Meter is a former full-time reporter for The Oakdale Leader, The Escalon Times and The Riverbank News; she continues to provide a monthly column. She can be reached at kvanmeter@oakdaleleader.com.