ChatGPT, tell me a fairy tale… (AI)

Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) generate fairy tales? How good are they? I asked ChatGPT to write a fairy tale for me.

There are fairy tale generators online, but I’m not blown away by the fairy tales they generate. However, when I caught the buzz around ChatGPT, I decided to check out if it can also generate a fairy tale.

ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations with a chatbot. Free access (with registration) at https://chat.openai.com/chat

AI, write me a fairy tale

Curiously I typed: write me a short fairy tale

I pressed Enter and ChatGPT replied:

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a beautiful princess named Rose. She lived in a magnificent castle with her kind and loving parents, the king and queen.

Rose was known throughout the land for her beauty and her gentle heart. She would often spend her days walking in the castle gardens, where she would talk to the animals and tend to the flowers. She was happiest when she was surrounded by nature.

One day, while Rose was out for a walk, she came upon a small, injured bird. She took the bird back to the castle and tended to its wounds, nursing it back to health.

As the bird recovered, it began to speak to Rose, telling her of the hardships and troubles of the outside world. The bird also told her of a wicked sorcerer who had cast a spell over the land, causing drought and famine.

Rose was determined to help the people of her kingdom, so she set out on a journey to find the sorcerer and put an end to his evil ways. She traveled for many days, facing dangers and challenges along the way.

Finally, she reached the sorcerer’s castle and confronted him. The sorcerer was powerful, but Rose was brave and determined. With the help of the magic of the animals and the power of nature, she was able to defeat the sorcerer and break his spell.

The kingdom was saved and the people were able to live in peace and prosperity once again. And Rose, the beautiful and kind princess, was hailed as a hero. She returned to the castle, where she lived happily ever after.

Generated (no edits) by OpenAI’s ChatGPT

The AI-generated fairy tale was not so bad

That was not so bad, was it?

The quality of this story is good enough to take it as a start for composing your own story. A rough version to retell and rewrite a couple of times.

💡 Click here to read my most recent article about writing fairy tales with AI!

Asking the Reddit Community /r/fairytales for their opinions

I posted the story on Reddit, and we agreed on some of the shortcomings of this fairy tale:

• The middle of the fairy tale lacks heart and soul.
• The fairy tale does not contain many striking images, it’s quite bland.

However, also one Redditor commented that they were writing something themselves that had elements of this fairy tale!

What happens when you ask the AI to generate several fairy tales?

Okay, here we run into a problem.

I asked ChatGPT for several more fairy tales, in several different ways. However, the fairy tales it told me were very similar.

This surprised me a little when I think about the wild variety of fairy tales in the world, which are mostly available online. Either ChatGPT has not been fed many fairy tale collections, or it determines that there is some basic fairy tale concept that is the most optimal answer to such questions.

Maybe I need to ask about that in our next chat. 🙂

Photo credits: Possessed Photography on Unsplash