Yesterday evening I picked Cooper up from his weekly Monday Fun Day at a local “puppy resort.” As the pooped-out pup bounded into my back seat, an awful fragrance wafted from his head. Unidentifiable but highly potent, the smell quickly filled my car. I drove the five miles home with the windows wide open, the cold breeze acting as a natural fumigant.

And here is where I was going to write the funny blog about the challenge of giving Cooper a shower. But instead, I decided to try out ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program that is being touted as able to create text as good, or better, than the human writer. Already, educators suspect they will no longer be able to recognize essays written by computer rather than by their students. Journalists fear for their jobs. And I am afraid I may have to quit blogging.

So here is what ChatGPT constructed when I asked for a funny blog about Barb and Les giving Cooper a shower:

Barb and Les were excited to give their dog Cooper his first bath. They had all the supplies they needed: a towel, a shampoo, and a hose. But when they tried to put Cooper in the tub, he refused to cooperate.

Cooper wiggled and squirmed, trying to escape from Barb and Les’s grasp. They chased him around the bathroom, but he was too fast for them. Finally, they managed to catch him and hold him still long enough to get him in the tub.

But just as they started to rinse him off with the hose, Cooper shook himself dry and sent a spray of water all over Barb and Les. They were drenched from head to toe, and they couldn’t stop laughing.

In the end, Cooper enjoyed his bath so much that he jumped out of the tub and started rolling around in the puddles on the bathroom floor. Barb and Les were exhausted, but they were happy that their dog was clean and happy. The end.

ChatGPT

Well, what do you think? Personally, I am not terribly impressed. Those paragraphs feel like they were culled from a Dick and Jane reading primer. But I guess this sort of thing is still in its infancy, so a first-grade primer is pretty appropriate.

And by the way, about the picture at the top of this blog. No, that’s not Cooper. That is a picture that DALL-E, a different artificial intelligence program, created when I asked for a funny picture of a dog taking a shower.

I will admit that DALL-E does a better job on illustrations than I could. But for now, I am putting ChatGPT to bed—I like what I write, and I’m going to keep on doing it my way!

And now for YOUR opinion: