Editor Introduction

Well, it's another month. It seems that every month, AI is made out to be the villain in some scheme. Just as the Writer's Strike ends (partly over AI), a Voice Actor strike begins (again, partly over AI). And also more authors are suing AI companies for "illegally" using their books to train AIs.

Put "illegally" in quotes, because it's about as illegal as having a squirrel read a book. Considering that GPT-4 has as many synapses as as a squirrel's brain, it's not that far off. So, I had ChatGPT write a quick story about it:

In the sprawling kingdom of the Nutwood Forest, a humble squirrel named Scurry found himself in a most peculiar predicament. You see, Scurry had been captured by a group of mischievous woodland creatures, and they had sentenced him to an unusual punishment: to read the epic tomes of the revered squirrel author.

With a sigh, Scurry began to peruse the first volume of "A Song of Nuts and Acorns." He was immediately drawn into a world of intrigue, where squirrel nobility schemed for power, and alliances were as fragile as autumn leaves. The intricate plots and complex characters swept him into a maelstrom of emotions.

As he turned the pages, Scurry found himself engrossed in the tales of treachery and loyalty, of squirrels striving for the Iron Acorn Throne, and of direbeasts lurking beyond the Wallnut. He could hardly put the book down, his furry tail twitching in excitement.

Days turned into weeks as Scurry devoured each book in the series. He became entangled in the fates of squirrel knights and lady squirrels, their stories intertwining like the branches of an ancient oak tree. The twists and turns of the narrative left him baffled and intrigued, and he often wondered if he, too, was part of some grand squirrel saga.

But as winter descended upon Nutwood, Scurry's captors grew bored of their experiment. They released him into the forest once more, his mind filled with the epic tales of the squirrel scribe. Scurry returned to his life among the trees, but he could never forget the world he had glimpsed through the pages of those novels.

And so, in the quiet moments beneath the starry night, Scurry often wondered about the fate of the characters he had met and the kingdoms he had explored. For though he was a simple squirrel, he carried with him the echoes of an epic adventure that would stay with him until the end of his nutty days.

In this issue, we're going to put aside the demonization of AI (maybe demons will be in our Christmas issue...) and bring forth a slew of cyberpunk stories written entirely by AI. My particular favorite from this issue is definitely Bytes and Banter.

Cyberpunk is a wonderful genre that takes the current state of our technology and pushes it to an absurd location. I hope that you enjoy some of these wonderful stories crafted by our finest robots.

As always, we want to know what you think. Please feel free to drop us a comment or send us an email. We want to know what you want to see in future issues of ArtifAIct.

Enjoy!

Jacob P. Silvia
Editor-in-Chief, ArtifAIct Magazine