Fiction

Would you believe it

My Journal 2025

Friday 31 October

Dear Journal

Remember I was born in 2010 so that by 2022, when ChatGPT went to its debutante ball online, I was 12. Cherry, ripe for the picking. I would in fact say (or whisper) that I was therefore on the crispycusp of every thing-thing. I have always loved my name: “Alice Ingleton”. I link “Alice” to the Carroller who invented the pop-popular rabbit hole. Please note that “Ingleton” means “settlement of the wolf”. So it is strangely satisfactory for a girl-person who trucks (rhyme?) with AI. The eagle has landed, the wolf is on the loose. My dear puppet-parents did not realise that with my name they had handpassed me a precious magic ghoul-tool. It is a class joke that my so-called “English Essays” must be produced by AI, since they are so dense and nonny-sensical. DJ, they are NOT produced by the online Tool AI, but as you well know, by yours terribly truly, Alice Ingleton, AI of East Brunswick, Victoria, Australia, British Commonwealth, the World, the Universe, Online.

If our teacher, poor old David Davidson (would you believe it?) were not baby-bald, he would tear out his foxy-locks when he has to decide whether to refuse to mark my wonder-works or to give me a D for Damned or an A for Axellent. Today he tried sending me to the Pretty-Principal, Patty Jones, with my mini-manifesto on Virginia Woolf. The whole matter was clearly beyond Patty. You are not going to believe this – she simply picked up the essay with her fingertips (metallic nude polish on long-long claws decorated with pale blue stars), and she dropped it in her little wastepaper bin. “You may return to your class unit and apologise to Mr Davidson for your silliness. I expect to see a sensible piece of serious work on my desk by Monday.”

So, anyway, since I need some A’s for Axellents, I have given in to them. I have decided the only thing to do is to bow down to pressure, approach AI and hand in the resulting “essay” on Monday.

Tuesday 4 November

Well, DJ, I did it. I handed in this sweet-smooth thing in all its bland generalisations and artificial analyses of every micro-metaphor. You want adjectives, nouns? Always three in a row – and toss in a handy Oxford comma for hyper-cred. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack – the wheels on the train go round and round – and the train pulls into the Station of Purring-Perfection. DO you admire my metaphors, DJ? You would have to wonder what that old Virgin of a Woolf would make of this as against my original little fruit salad. And here is what happened. Read on.

Dapper David Davidson smiled and breathed great gasps of relief as his anxious eyes scanned the document in his hand. You may think I am exaggerating, DJ, but I tell you, the snake of his grin grew longer as he read:

“The style of Woolf’s prose is characterized by her inventive use of interior monologue, which explores the inner thoughts, emotions, and understanding of her characters. Past, present, and future are elegantly interlaced, delving into the complexities of human life. Her writing is marked by its lyrical nature, soul-searching, and detailed observation.” He drew a great big scarlet A for Axellence on my paper and made a frilly circle around it. Imagine. Then he told me to take it along to Pitty Patty.

He fortunately ignored the American spelling in the first line, and was perhaps unaware that the sing-song rhythm of the sentences was not the tune that comes from the harpsichord of Alice Ingleton, but from the ding-dang-dingle of Artificial Intelligence. I note, in case you are wondering, that the AI Tools cannot own Copyright in their work – well not yet, as I understand things. Give them time, DJ, give them time. But for now I can quote their work to you, for the sake of interest.

Incidentally, I heard later that Dapper David had made a killing on the Melbourne Cup. So it was a great day for him – wealth and a certain harmony in the class unit.

But it was a rather sad day for me, in spite of my A for Axellence. AI the Tool has triumphed over AI of East Brunswick. Do I therefore surrender my weapons, retract my claws and bow to the almighty god of AI, never more to wander in the wild woods of my own words, words which bubble and flow from my own heart? Dilemma, DJ, devil-dilemma. Like a cockatoo, I seem to have begun to imitate some of the characteristics of the Tool myself. Check out the rhythm of my sentence about the weapons.

Well, Pitty greeted me with a flutter of her claws and a wide show of her perfect teeth. She actually asked me to sit down so that we were at eye-level as she burbled her delight at my “change in attitude”. If I keep this up, she said, I will go far. Yes, Pitty, I imagine I will. I have thus disappeared down a deep-dark rabbit hole into the world of cliché, banality, platitude. Far, far away. You will note the list of three, DJ. Oh woe. (As a matter of fact, I used to be quite fond of that rhythm until the Tool got hold of it.) Pitty reached for a glass bowl of multicoloured jelly beans and invited me to take one. You guessed it – I took the black one, popped it in my mouth and wanted to spit it in her face. I didn’t.

My present dilemma, DJ, is how to move forward. Do I rely forever on the Tool, abandoning my own very heart and soul and words and, dare I say, potential. Do I just give up, give in, and roll with the robot punches? When the Tool is so big, so powerful, so allovereverywhere, how do I write at all? Why should I bother? Decisions, decisions.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 22, 2025 as "Would you believe it".

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