There’s a great paradox I’ve noticed among the coffee lovers in my life: the fine line between being a connoisseur and just being… well, a person who really enjoys a cup of coffee. Perhaps it’s because I find myself straddling the line. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been personally victimised by overpriced, underwhelming lattes, which are the epitome of my existential crisis.
I didn’t write that. I hope you could tell – if not because you know that I only ever drink black coffee, then because you are familiar enough with my writing to appreciate that, though my reflections are at times silly and trivial, I would never be so ridiculous as to claim lattes were “the epitome of my existential crisis”. (Also, I could never write the words “personally victimised” without following them up with “by Regina George”.)
Much as I am loathe to give further exposure to The Rest Is… podcast empire, I recently heard Richard Osman read an AI-generated “Marina Hyde” column on The Rest Is Entertainment. And, well, I was interested to see if it could do me. So this week – out of curiosity rather than laziness, you understand – I asked ChatGPT: “Can you write me a column in the style of Pippa Bailey?”
“Of course!” the terrifyingly disembodied info-robo replied. “Pippa Bailey’s writing often balances wit with insightful, conversational tones. It’s charming, sometimes a little cheeky, and often offers a mix of personal anecdotes and observations. Let me try to emulate that style for you.” (Always wise to start with flattery.) Within seconds, it had produced 550 words – 200 too short for this column, but we’ll forgive it that.
All I can say is I sincerely hope that what ChatGPT produced was not an accurate rendition of my copy, or else I need to find a new career – and not just because the technology has rendered me obsolete. Try: “A little joy in the mundane, like grabbing a coffee from the local corner shop before a chaotic Monday, is the life force of a balanced existence.” Or perhaps: “But it’s those little imperfections that make the coffee (and, let’s be honest, life itself) worth sipping, one cup at a time.” Utterly inane.
It got some things right. Coffee beans “hand-picked by people who could hear the beans whisper in another language” is exactly the level of hyperbole I favour, though my friend A— (whom you might remember from the first-date-in-Copenhagen episode) would tell you that the AI column exhibits neither enough commas (nor bracketed asides) to pass for my prose. And I am concerned about getting “caught up in semantics”, though I’m at a loss for what the semantics are in “skinny vanilla lattes are to coffee snobs what pineapple on pizza is to Italian purists – an abomination. But, let’s not get caught up in semantics.” If ChatGPT really knew me, it would know that before I became a vegetarian, pineapple and ham pizza was my ride or die.
But what it really got wrong was the topic. Writing earnestly about coffee is so painfully uncool; I would never! So I gave the info-robo a more direct prompt: “Can you write one about dating?”
Reader, things got worse. Leaving aside the absurdity of a disembodied force “writing” “the wild first kisses that feel a little too long but also just right” (ChatGPT’s italics), the real problem is that AI cannot replicate any sense of individuality or life experience. It has no loosely related anecdotes to draw on; it cannot text my mother: “What was that time when I was a kid when…” All it can do is regurgitate what it does know about me – it seems, for instance, to have discerned that pizza is my favourite food; AI “me” mentions it twice – and mixes it with trite generalisations and cliché. A typical example: “Maybe we should try something radical: let go of the scripts, forget the rules, and embrace the unpredictable chaos that is modern dating. Who knows? That might just be where the real magic is hiding.”
How does that sound? I tried to capture that mix of humour, frustration and hopeful insight that Pippa Bailey often brings to her columns. Let me know if you’d like me to adjust anything!
[See also: Kemi Badenoch doesn’t understand Gen Z]
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This article appears in the 12 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Reformation