Imagining with AI, a writing workshop across generations

In June 2023, ChatGPT had only been available to the general public for a few months, and generative artificial intelligence was already filling public debate as much as industrial speculation. As part of the Numok festival, the Canopée library invited us to run a writing workshop around these tools with the author Makan Fofana. Rather than celebrating or rejecting them, we wanted to put them to the test of imagination. Makan Fofana, author of La Banlieue du Turfu, shares our wish to bring imagination down to earth, that is, to give it back to everyone.

After a presentation of the issues and a demonstration of the tools, we formed groups that mixed generations, from young children to older people. Each group invented a story by talking with ChatGPT, following writing rules that pushed the machine to hallucinate and reveal its biases, then tried to generate images from it with Dream.

The stories presented at the end mixed different ways of working. Some passages were written by hand, others with the machine, and some groups preferred to look for reference images rather than have them generated. A critical discussion closed the workshop, which today, given how much these tools have changed, looks like a genuinely forward-looking exercise.