When DJ Bennett gave ChatGPT a Meltdown!
Me: Write me a paragraph in the style of the crime author DJ Bennett
ChatGPT: Sure! D.J. Bennett is known for her gritty, atmospheric style, tight prose, and psychological depth, often weaving suspenseful plots with flawed but compelling protagonists. Here's a paragraph inspired by her tone and style:
The city breathed a low, oily fog that curled around the streetlamps and slid between the cracks in the pavement like something sentient. Detective Ava North leaned against the rusted rail of the overpass, cigarette forgotten in her fingers, eyes fixed on the pattern of blood just below—a smear like a dragged brushstroke, vivid against concrete. No witnesses, no weapon, just a girl with secrets stitched into her silence. And Ava, haunted by the same hunger that kept her up at night: the need to understand why people break, and how far they’ll go once they do.
Would you like me to write a few more paragraphs?
Me: Yes, please
ChatGPT thinks for a few seconds and produces a couple of paragraphs which disappear after a few moments to be replaced with a message:
Okaay.... I asked it what had happened and it said it would try again - it did and I got the same message. So i asked if it had violated its own policies and it admitted it might have done. At which point, ChatGPT asked me to log in to continue the session and promptly removed the entire conversation!
I have no idea what it wrote in my style that was so offensive, it didn't like what it had written! I'm not sure if I should be flattered or upset!
After logging in 'properly', I tried again:
Me: Tell me about the author DJ Bennett
This time, ChatGPT gave me a comprehensive and impressive list of books, numbers of ratings and reviews and a quick style overview. It ends with:
ChatGPT: D.J. Bennett (Debbie Bennett) is a respected author in the British crime thriller scene. Her Hamelin’s Child series is lauded for its gritty realism, emotional depth, and unapologetic treatment of dark subject matter. With consistent strong ratings and dedicated readership, she’s a memorable voice for intense crime narratives.
Me: Write me a paragraph in the style of the crime author DJ Bennett
ChatGPT: The cold settled in like a second skin, crawling through the broken windows of the squat and clinging to every inch of Jay’s bones. He crouched in the corner, arms wrapped tight around his knees, trying to ignore the damp stench of mold and something worse—something metallic and final. Outside, the rain hissed against the concrete like it knew what had happened here. He didn’t remember all of it—just flashes. The glint of a knife. A scream cut short. The weight of a body slumping to the floor. His breath caught in his throat. It wasn’t supposed to go that far. They were just meant to scare him. Just a warning. But warnings didn’t bleed out in front of you, and Jay couldn’t stop the tremor in his fingers as he reached for the burner phone. Time to make the call. Time to disappear. Again.
Me: Can you expand?
ChatGPT: The cold settled in like a second skin, crawling through the broken windows of the squat and clinging to every inch of Jay’s bones. It wasn’t just the temperature—it was the kind of cold that got into your blood, like guilt. He crouched in the far corner, arms locked around his knees, trying to disappear into the shadows, to forget the metallic stench curling through the air. It clung to the peeling wallpaper and soaked into the threadbare carpet, thick and coppery. Blood. A lot of it.
Outside, the rain hissed against the concrete like it knew what had happened here. London had a way of burying things under its noise—sirens in the distance, the steady drip of water through rusted pipes, the hum of a city that didn’t care. He didn’t remember everything. Just pieces, shattered and sharp. A shove. A curse. A flash of silver. The sound of someone choking on their own breath. And then the silence that came after—the kind that pressed in from all sides, heavy with consequence.
Jay’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. His fingers, still slick with someone else’s blood, fumbled for the burner phone in his pocket. He had one number saved. Just one. It wasn’t a friend. It was a fixer. Someone who cleaned up messes like this—for a price. His thumb hovered over the button. He hadn’t meant to kill him. It wasn’t supposed to go that far. Just a scare, a message. But warnings don’t bleed out on the floor. Warnings don’t have eyes that stay open, staring.
He dialed. The line rang once. Twice. Then a voice, flat and familiar. “Talk.”
Jay swallowed hard. “I need out.”
A pause. Then, “Where are you?”
Jay looked around at the decaying flat, the dead man cooling beside him, and the life he was about to run from—again.
“Nowhere,” he said. “And everywhere.”
Let me state for the record, I don’t, never have, and never intend to use ChatGPT or any other AI to write, edit, or for anything other than idle curiosity. But it has actually got my writing style disturbingly accurate. While the prose is over complex, too descriptive and decidedly purple in places, it does sound like me - or at least to me, it appears to be not far off the kind of thing I would actually write
I'm not sure what to take from this experiment. AI scares me. I've used it at work - before I retired I was occasionally involved with robotics software; that is, writing data extracts of things like duplicate addresses, so that software can then decide (and presumably learn) whether two addresses are in fact the same address. But that was baby stuff where you input parameters and there is a strict set of yes/no rules. The subjectivity of fiction writing is way more advanced. If Ai can write like me, then who needs me? I could churn out a book and if it sounds like me, how would anybody know it isn't? I don't think I'd dare run my own work through one of these 'AI checkers', because what if it said my writing was AI?
I don't like this at all. But know thy enemy. I feel I need to be prepared, to understand, so at least I'll know why creative fiction is drowning in a sea of machine language. While ChaptGPT appears to have learned from its mistakes in writing a bit to grittily for the tastes of its own algorithms, at least I have the dubious honour of making it have a meltdown!
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