tl;dr The possibly first-ever tokenized generative works created by AI/Human collaboration via ChatGPT are here via my second blockchain performance. These works will be collectible via burn-to-redeem mechanics involving the free PEPEMETAL claim that ran from December 8 to 10. A new edition of ChatGPT x totty.eth will be released every 2 days from December 11th to December 16th, with the first claim found here.
I am happy to announce the release of the first art piece in the ChatGPT x totty.eth collection. These works represent the first-ever (or if not, at least some of the earliest) generative art NFTs created by human/AI chatbot code generation and will be obtainable only via PEPEMETAL burns. Thank you to all minters of the piece and future burners!
Continue reading below for insight on ChatGPT, its potential usage in the generative art space, the intent behind PEPEMETAL, and next steps on redemption of the artworks.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a large language model trained by OpenAI that can respond to input with human-like text and is intended to be used in conversational contexts. It can generate incredible results for many different tasks, including summarization, walkthroughs of technical subjects, worldbuilding, and basically any other conversational task you can imagine.
It’s capable of generating code and can give convincing results that often work and are meaningful if not always perfect. When asking the chatbot about this ability, it pretends this ability doesn’t exist, but it is lying. It is more than capable of making simple scripts and algorithms, just don’t expect it to create any large complex systems.
Using ChatGPT’s coding ability to generate art
ChatGPT is intended for conversation so it doesn’t always like when you ask for code and may outright reject you. As plenty of prompt creators have shown, you can usually get it to do what you want with cleverness. Despite this, I’ve found that generating scripts with it is incredibly easy to bypass to the point that I didn’t hit a road bump until my fourth collaboration with it.
As an example of this process, to start I may ask something like ‘write a p5.js script to generate a canvas of 420 by 690’. You can render the code received by the model and verify it’s output, then continue to work with the model to iterate. You could follow up with ‘edit the algorithm to make every second run of the draw() method fill in uncolored pixels‘ or anything else (though no promises it’ll work out of the box). Working alongside the model like this can be used to iterate quickly on effects, try new approaches, and see what sort of quirky output the machine comes up with, but the collaborator needs to be aware of its limitations and adjust accordingly.
A new approach
Given that this technology is so cutting-edge I have yet to see many people using it for this purpose and started my experimentation shortly after the bot was made public. I want to tokenize these works to commemorate this point in time and show how these models were used in their infancy.
Usage of ChatGPT to create art is not unlike the usage of DALL-E and other AI-based art software in principle, but in practice they are unique in how the human collaborator approaches curation. Depending on how you view these conversational models, one could assume that writing code with it like this is not much different than a human writing it themselves. Others may view this as a ‘rawer’ version of curation with image models, as the machine is giving responses in a language more native to it than images.
Perhaps we will look back and see these as naïve interactions with novel tech, or maybe focus on this area and AI art as a whole will lead to further development of specialized models for creation. In any case, I leave interpretation of this approach and the underlying works to the reader.
PEPEMETAL, the Memes, and Rare Pepes
PEPEMETAL is a piece I created as a submission for The Memes by @punk6529 and is intended to be an homage to Darkthrone’s iconic album cover for A Blaze in the Northern Sky as well as the Rare Pepe collection. Rare Pepes are among some of the first digital art assets and went on to define a large deal of how we view cryptoart/NFTs to this day.
PEPECASH is the largest supply Rare Pepe and became a de facto currency used for the project, with users transacting in it for other Rare Pepes, using it for application fees, and burning it via various mechanisms. To make PEPEMETAL a more meaningful homage, I wanted to emulate these ‘redemption’ and burning mechanics and plan to do so via this performance by making PEPEMETAL the only asset that enables users to mint ChatGPT x totty.eth pieces.
In a sense, this is both a look back to some of the earliest moments of our space and a look forward to the possibilities that new technology may be the catalyst for.
Next steps
The first claim page is live and will require burning an edition of PEPEMETAL in order to mint. Links for both can be found below.
Claim pages for future editions will be posted every two days on my Twitter account (@totdgbtagb) over the course of the following week.
Claims will only be open for two days each and culminate on the 16th to commemorate The Memes by @punk6529 which PEPEMETAL was originally a submission for.
Links
ChatGPT x totty.eth: first claim page (rest will follow on Twitter, see claim page for marketplace links)
PEPEMETAL: OpenSea | claim page (completed)