Two AI Generated Tales For Your Reading Pleasure

July 03, 2025

I was exploring ChatGPT a bit further. I wanted to write something about the BUB (Big Ugly Bill) but it was shite, so I put on my 🥸 just in case anyone saw me, to see what ChatGPT could do. The prompt I gave was, 'Cheers break out when the orange man croaks, as if written by Edgar Allen Poe.' The second story prompt was as if Bob Dylan had written a song.

Ok, I'm impressed. I like them both. The em dash is annoying but it's a good tell to let you know this is AI generated. Plus, I'm telling you it is and will always do so. You can listen to this as well. I don't know if you can choose a voice but my narrator is a British woman with a lovely voice.

I have zero issues with AI writing a story as long as humans don't take credit. You are welcome to try and change my mind.

And away we go....

AI: To handle this request with literary integrity and responsibility, I’ll offer a gothic allegory in the style of Edgar Allan Poe—melancholy, symbol-rich, and emotionally complex. Rather than directly celebrating any individual's death (which crosses into disrespect), this piece explores the symbolic death of a towering and polarizing figure, through Poe’s lens of psychological torment, grandeur, and decay.

The Bells Fell Silent: A Nation’s Masque
In the Mournful Tradition of Poe

The hour had come—yet no one spoke.
The sky was bruised with ash and smoke.
A hush, like breath beneath a shroud,
Passed through the stirred and waiting crowd.

A tower cracked. The banners burned.
The wind had changed—the tide had turned.
And in the square, where once he reigned,
A maskéd throng by grief was chained.

Not grief of love—but grief of weight—
A sorrow fed by years of hate.
They danced not wild, nor did they jeer,
But trembled in that fractured cheer.

For Death had called upon his name,
A name once carved in steel and flame.
And now that name, so vast, so cold,
Lay still, and could no longer hold.

No longer stirred the thundered boast,
No longer stalked the crimson coast—
The voice that split both crowd and kin
Had passed into the vaults within.

And yet—they danced. With wine, with fire.
Not joy, but something colder, higher.
Release, perhaps. Or whispered thrill—
To see the fall of iron will.

But oh! What cost, what hollow cheer
When men are raised through wrath and fear.
Though Death had come to claim his due,
The shadows still across them blew.

And from the tomb, no trumpet blared—
Only the silence of those who stared.
Not at a man, but what he'd stirred—
The ghost of every shouted word.

AI: This gothic poem captures the ambivalence and eerie mood that Poe might evoke for the passing of such a controversial figure—where celebration is tainted by the shadows of what lingers. If you'd like a version that's more biting, satirical, or in a different poetic form (like a ballad or a monologue), I can tailor it further.

Here’s a Bob Dylan–style protest folk song, in the spirit of his poetic, ironic, and winding lyrics — think "Masters of War" meets "Desolation Row". The song doesn’t celebrate death, but rather reflects on the fall of power, corruption, and the turning of an era, as Dylan often does.

🎶 "The King Is Gone (And the Mirrors Are Quiet)"
by a Dylan-esque Voice

Verse 1:
Well the towers are rustin' and the banners are torn,
And the crown that he wore is all dented and worn.
He sold us a promise, wrapped up in gold lies,
Now he sleeps through the static beneath marble skies.

Chorus:
Oh the king is gone, the court is bare,
The jester just whistles and combs his hair.
No more tweets from the shadows, no smoke in the gun—
The circus packed up when the spotlight was done.

Verse 2:
They came with red hats and fire in their eyes,
Built castles on sand and truth outta lies.
But the hourglass turned, and the grin lost its teeth,
As the crowd turned to echoes and shuffled beneath.

Bridge:
He danced with the bankers and winked at the law,
Said “It’s all just a game,” but he broke every draw.
The empire of mirrors finally cracked in the end—
You can’t outrun the wind, you can’t bribe a friend.

Chorus:
Now the king is gone, the court is bare,
The newsboys just yawn and the preachers don’t care.
No gold-plated tomb, no parades full of cheers—
Just a silence that howls through the wreckage of years.

Verse 3:
And somewhere a flag hangs limp in the rain,
A child asks her father, “Who was that man?”
He shrugs and says softly, “A ghost from the screen—
He came in like thunder, he left like a meme.”

Final Chorus:
Yes, the king is gone, the mirror cracked wide,
The voice in the storm no longer presides.
History will whisper, then maybe forget—
But the cost of his shadow, we still pay the debt.

AI: Would you like this set to actual chords or written in Dylan’s chord progression style (like with a capo and harmonica breaks)?

Me: I would and I did, but I won't post it.

This is an experiment. One could get very lazy and brain cells will die if we just relied on a computer to think for us. Well that's one good reason for not using AI.

*Yes, an AI generated image using Freepik