I Wrote This Song With ChatGPT
And didn’t get the song I wanted after two tries
ChatGPT is all the rage right now. Released five weeks ago by OpenAI, the AI chatbot has allowed over a million people to generate text including, according to the New York Times, “everything from poetry to high school term papers to rewrites of Queen songs.”
Naturally, I had to go play. I’m dealing with some severe side effects from medication and trying to find as many distractions as I can to get through it. ChatGPT is free right now, as they’re in the testing and feedback phase, so I’m letting myself run wild.
I can write my own poems and articles, thank you very much, so I thought I’d try having ChatGPT write a song.
I assumed that as with my art-making artificial intelligence program, Midjourney AI, I would get better results by providing a more detailed prompt. For example, telling Midjourney that I want an image of a “woman walking in summer fields” will get me a result that’s way less beautiful and specific than if I tell it to generate:
woman walking in summer fields of golden grass, her skin is tan from the sun, long blonde wavy hair, wearing a yellow dress, turning her head up toward the sun, highly detailed, photo realistic, volumetric lighting
I decided to have ChatGPT write a song about the first guy I ever loved, who I still love from afar. I provided some rough details, assuming that none of this wording would actually make it into the song, but that the AI would smooth it over and create something new and beautiful out of it. Here was my input:
Write me a melancholy song about my first love who is now married to another woman. I fell in love with him in high school and thought it was unrequited. He was a math genius, I preferred the humanities. We were the two smartest kids in school. He called me a goddess. I longed to tell him how I felt but didn’t dare. It was only a few years later that his mom told me he had felt the same way about me.
I would see him every summer during college when we came home and swam laps in the pool. I was shy and didn’t talk much. He must have thought I didn’t want to. Next summer, I would think. Next summer I’ll tell him I love him. But next summer never came — he studied abroad that year, then got a girlfriend and never came back. He married that girl. It still breaks my heart. I’ve been in love with him for twenty years and I’ll never stop. He was supposed to be mine.
I was astoundingly disappointed by the result. The AI kept most of my words and shoved them into a rough, shoddy outline of a “song”:
Verse 1:
I remember the days of high school
We were the two smartest in the school
You were a math genius, I loved the humanities
But somehow, we connected, you called me a goddess
Chorus:
But now you’re married to another woman
And it breaks my heart to see
I’ve been in love with you for twenty years
You were supposed to be mine
Verse 2:
I would see you every summer when I came home
We’d swim laps in the pool,
but I was shy and didn’t talk much
I thought I had more time,
that next summer I’d tell you
But next summer never came,
you studied abroad and fell in love
Chorus:
But now you’re married to another woman
And it breaks my heart to see
I’ve been in love with you for twenty years
You were supposed to be mine
Bridge:
Your mom told me you felt the same way
But it was too late, the damage was done
I’ll always love you, my first love
But now you’re just a distant memory
Chorus:
But now you’re married to another woman
And it breaks my heart to see
I’ve been in love with you for twenty years
You were supposed to be mine
Oh, God. Does anyone else want to vomit? Those words were never meant to be seen by anyone. They were just a rough draft.
So I tried the opposite strategy: feed the AI very little information. I typed in the prompt, “Write me a melancholy song about my first love who is now married to another woman.”
This time, ChatGPT returned some text that you could see a skilled musician turning into something you’d actually want to listen to:
Verse 1:
It’s been so long since I’ve seen your face
But I still remember every single trace
Of the love that we shared, it was all so real
But now you’re someone else’s, and it’s time to heal
Chorus:
You were my first love, my one and only
But now you’re gone, and I’m feeling lonely
I know that you’re happy, and that’s all that matters
But my heart still breaks, every time I see your face
Verse 2:
We had it all, or at least that’s what I thought
But love can be fickle, and ours was caught
In a web of circumstance, beyond our control
And now you’re married, to another soul
Chorus:
You were my first love, my one and only
But now you’re gone, and I’m feeling lonely
I know that you’re happy, and that’s all that matters
But my heart still breaks, every time I see your face
Bridge:
I try to move on, but it’s hard to do
When every memory, leads back to you
You were my first love, and I’ll always care
But now it’s time to let go, and say a prayer
Chorus:
You were my first love, my one and only
But now you’re gone, and I’m feeling lonely
I know that you’re happy, and that’s all that matters
But my heart still breaks, every time I see your face
Alright, so this song is way better dressed than the first version. But it doesn’t at all convey the meaning I wanted it to. Its words aren’t specific to me.
“I know that you’re happy, and that’s all that matters,” for instance. I don’t want him to be happy without me! I want that girl out of the picture, STAT.
“But now it’s time to let go, and say a prayer.” Great, nice sentiment. But I’m an atheist and would never say a prayer. This phrase doesn’t touch my heartstrings at all.
And “we had it all”? No, we didn’t. That’s the great tragedy of this love story, which the generic AI-generated song fails to convey.
I probably won’t ask ChatGPT to write a song again, unless I’m really bored, but I think I’ll continue to explore its capabilities and see if it could enhance my work on Medium in any way.
Even if you don’t think you’d use it in your published work, I strongly encourage you to check it out! It’s fun to play with and it could be important to take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with it because it’s going to have a huge impact on the writing/blogging scene going forward. Some articles on Medium are already being written by AI.
You can find ChatGPT at https://chat.openai.com/. It’s free as of January 7, 2023.
Thanks for reading! Here are a couple more pieces I’ve written: