Interacting with my Privately-Trained Chatbot

A few days ago, I asked you to pose some questions to the Virtual James Gurney, a chatbot that we trained on all my blog posts, videos, books, and interviews.

Ruben (@rgramosart on Twitter) asked the question about getting digital art to look painterly. Hmmm, Real James Gurney here. I think the virtual me knows more about digital painting techniques than I do. Maybe that’s because he lives inside a computer.

Matt A.A. Smith ( @smithmattsmith on Instagram) asked a fun question about painting dinosaurs from life. I’m fascinated how large language models navigate truth, satire, fiction, and comedy. We humans play all sorts of pretend games with each other, and I love the way the chatbot seemed to address the fact that we’re just having fun here. A wittier chatbot would have observed that birds are really dinosaurs, and that I’ve sketched chickens, turkeys, and emus from life.

Moézyo de Lima ( @moezyo on IG) asked his questions in Portuguese, and it gave the answer in the same language. This is a capability of the model I wasn’t expecting.

@myphonetookthis asked the kind of questions that could be answered in many individual ways by different artists. The privately trained chatbot answers just in the way I would, with words quoted or closely adapted from my published writing.

@clarewashere asked a question that was a little tongue-in-cheek, and the chatbot gave her a sincere answer, if a little simplistic.

If you want to play with the chatbot in a different way, you can ask it to take on an attitude or a character, such as a pretentious blowhard or a film noir gangster, and it will oblige.

Be sure to bookmark the URL, which is currently listed on the Linktree if you click on my name.

For the five folks that I chose as winners, please email me your mailing address (it’s on the left edge of my blog), and I’ll send you a signed poster.