OpenAI has recently released GPT-4, which it claims surpasses ChatGPT on every level. The field of AI writing is exciting and terrifying to watch. At times it makes me feel like John Henry the steel-driving man, testing my own skills against those of the constantly advancing machines. And the example given on GPT-4’s homepage certainly attracted this word nerd’s interest:
This is an example of abecedarian writing, using a fairly tight constraint. Some abecedarian works are longer poems that begin each line with each successive letter from A to Z. Beginning each word? That’s harder.
It’s possible to read this instruction and come up with a less-than-26-word sentence, something like “Fairy godmother hexes ingenue.” But GPT-4 did it the hard way.
All things considered, this is a very good effort. The last few words are especially impressive. There’s a small pool of both x-words and z-words to work with, so getting one of each to play together is a challenge. The x-word was a new one on me, but we could all stand to be a little more xenial (welcoming to strangers and strange ideas, like the idea of marrying a commoner).
Although since “slipper” seems to be the subject in the last clause, “rescues” should really be “rescuing.” And shouldn’t there be another comma before “very”…?
Nitpicking aside, can humans still do better? I think we can, and I’m going to invite some people I know to try. I’m also opening that challenge up to you, dear readers.
Explain the plot of Cinderella in a sentence where each word has to begin with the next letter in the alphabet from A to Z. And make it 26 words from A to Z, like the example. You can send me your attempt at tcampbell1000(a-in-a-circle)gmail.com, or just leave it as a reply to this very post.