A couple months ago, I was asked to answer a writing prompt in my creative writing class. Each student were to come up with a short prompt to be randomized and passed on for another student to answer. When I received mine, I wore an uneasy smirk. My prompt was a bizarre- ahem… creative prompt. The prompt is below:
“One day everyone’s socks came to life and began eating everybody’s toes. 10 years later, all socks are gone. How did the world government get rid of them?”
(Credit goes to the anonymous student that wrote the prompt).
My first impression was that the prompt required a lot of thought and not so much thought at the same time. The prompt was pretty straightforward. And how many different possibilities were there really? Maybe our government already had a protocol for situations like this. But would it make sense to answer the prompt with what might be a traditional government response? After all, this was a creative writing class.
The requirements for this assignment was to write a short story with at least one static or dynamic character and one piece of dialogue. However, answering the prompt was just a portion of the assignment.
We were informed that the same prompts were to be run through an AI, namely ChatGPT. Well, I thought this assignment would be interesting to share here. I’m sure you’re also wondering if ChatGPT’s algorithmic creativity beats human creativity.
To start off, I will be listing my story below. As I wrote this story using my own creative elements generated from my brain, this serves as a baseline of what I hoped to achieve with ChatGPT.
My Story:
“What- I’m trying to work Aimee!” Bade, seated, slams the newspaper onto the dining table, his half completed crossword with blotches of shaky letters exposed under the generous lighting.
Aimee picks up the crossword and holds it to Bade’s face. “You’ve been working on the crossword for a good hour and you never read the headline?”
Bade, annoyed, jolts his head back with a squinted eye to read the paper. “After 10 years, The SNACKER SOCKS crisis is to be solved,” Bade reads out loud, his eye growing wide. Grabbing the paper with his elbow stubs, he sets it onto the table again.
“SEEE, I told you everything would be okay! I can finally go out now for the first time!” Aimee wails, swinging her hands widely in the air while Bade continues onto the story under the headline.
The proposed solution by the government was to send all the socks to one disadvantaged individual. What was thought to be an insatiable hunger for the past 10 years was debunked by a team of scientists who studied individual socks, reexamining the motive of the Snacker Socks to be more sadistic and calculated.
Bade placed the newspaper face-down in his lap and centered his vision onto the distant wall across the living room. It was most-definitely good news the socks were to go, but to consume one disadvantaged individual… Bade couldn’t let Aimee know of the resolve. He had raised his daughter to treat everyone with equality and kindness since she was born at the beginning of the crisis. How would Aimee feel if she learned the world didn’t work that way, if the government themselves were willing to inflict suffering on one for the collective good? Nonetheless, Aimee was happy about this news, so Bade didn’t wish to feel morally threatened.
Aimee ran to Bade and grasped him tight, a hearty hug complete with each of her 10 fingers and toes taking special care to hold on to his back and calves. His bumpy, shiny, wrinkled forehead furrowed and his nonexistent lips cornered to reveal a smile. Life had not treated Bade kindly, with painful boils and deep fissures all over from a skin disorder, a heart condition that aggravated the flow of blood to his head causing substantial mood changes, and a single eye with questionable visual capabilities left in his skull after the second had been surgically removed. All his conditions were additionally exasperated by a special birth defect, a defect affecting his four limbs.
‘Ring!’ Bade awoke from the trance his daughter’s hug set on him. The doorbell trilled as the clock struck 12 on this fine Tuesday afternoon. It was time for the milk delivery, evidence of an empty glass with instant coffee powder across from Bade on the table. Aimee moved out of the way as her father went to get the door. Bade, unbalanced, toddled to the door with his two stubs, ending at where his foot should’ve been. Once at the door, he reaches above his head and twists open the doorknob with his bulbed elbows.
The door is opened. Bade stands ahead of a blur, vaguely resembling the milkman. An unknown expression wipes across Bade’s face as his vision clears. An army of socks, now completely comprehensible, towers over the doorstep as the natural light of the sun fades
Details
In my story, I added the characters Aimee and Bade and incorporated plenty of lines of dialogue to satisfy the requirements. I aimed to make the story unsettling through my word choice to match the energy of the prompt- inherently improbable. Making Bade “the chosen one” for non-superhuman characteristics is atypical in comparison to most superhero/apocalypse films.
Now that the standard has been set, it’s time to see the AI response. To make sure the story had similar length and quality to mine, I added in the extra requirement of “generate a story around 560 words.”
ChatGPT Generated Story
Title: The Day of the Socks
The world had never seen anything like it. One seemingly normal Tuesday, socks all over the globe sprang to life and began an unexpected rampage. The initial shock turned to horror as the socks’ sole purpose became clear: they were after toes.
Tommy Hargrove, then just ten years old, watched in disbelief as his striped socks wriggled off his feet and made a beeline for his mother’s toes. Mrs. Hargrove screamed, hopping onto the couch to escape the voracious fabric. The TV blared with emergency broadcasts, each more surreal than the last. “Stay calm and keep your shoes on,” the announcer advised, but it was too late for many.
In the chaos that followed, the world governments struggled to contain the situation. Houses were turned upside down, socks were hunted down, and people wore multiple layers of shoes, yet the problem persisted. As weeks turned into months, the world adapted in strange ways. The fashion industry boomed with innovative sock-resistant footwear, and “sock patrol” became a common neighborhood watch task.
Tommy, now an adult, had vivid memories of those terrifying early days. His little sister, Lily, had never experienced life with socks. To her, they were the stuff of horror stories and cautionary tales. One evening, while sitting by the fire, Lily asked, “Tommy, how did we ever get rid of the socks?”
Tommy sighed, staring into the flames. “It wasn’t easy, Lil. It took years of research and a lot of bravery. People had to come together like never before.”
A decade after the initial invasion, the world had finally found a solution. A brilliant scientist named Dr. Amelia Grant, who had lost her entire family to the sock menace, dedicated her life to studying these rogue textiles. Her breakthrough came when she discovered that the socks were vulnerable to a particular frequency of sound. It caused them to unravel and lose their animate properties.
Dr. Grant worked tirelessly, developing a device that emitted this specific frequency. She called it the “Sockbuster.” With the support of governments worldwide, production began on a massive scale. The plan was simple but dangerous: distribute Sockbusters to every household and activate them simultaneously. Coordinated by the newly-formed World Sock Defense Council, the operation was dubbed “Project Defeat.”
On the designated day, sirens wailed across cities and towns. People gathered in their homes, clutching their Sockbusters, hearts pounding in unison. Tommy, now part of the local defense unit, stood ready. “Alright, everyone,” he addressed his team, “we’ve only got one shot at this. Make it count.”
The countdown began. “Three… Two… One… Activate!”
A piercing hum filled the air. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, socks everywhere began to twitch uncontrollably. They convulsed, wrinkled, and finally unraveled into harmless threads. Cheers erupted as people watched the downfall of their tiny tormentors.
Years later, the world was free of the sock plague. Tommy, now a historian, often recounted the tale to eager listeners. “It wasn’t just the Sockbusters,” he’d say, “It was our unity and determination. That’s what truly defeated them.”
Lily, now grown, would nod, understanding the gravity of the ordeal. “I guess even the smallest things can become the biggest threats if we’re not careful,” she mused.
Tommy smiled, ruffling her hair. “Exactly. And it’s up to us to remember that and stay vigilant.”
And so, the world moved on, forever changed by the Day of the Socks, but stronger and more united in the face of future challenges.
The story above is… something. The AI definitely satisfied the requirements through including multiple characters and several lines of dialogue. When I read the story, the first difference I noticed was how ChatGPT has an explanation of the situation at the start. My story jumped into the action with little bits of exposition fit in at various portions, so the AI story seems quicker to understand with the added context.
Analysis
In terms of creativity, some elements seemed new such as the details on the fashion industry and “sock-resistant footwear”; however, other elements were borrowed/inspired from movies and entertainment such as the name ‘sockbusters” and the “vulnerability to a particular frequency” solution (Ghostbusters and A Quiet Place).
Conclusion
Overall, I think the AI story was well written and summative but took the prompt in a traditional sense. A governmental response to this situation would most likely involve capturing the socks and creating some sort of antidote in collaboration with scientists, which is exactly what the story suggested. Based on this assignment, I would say the AI is able to answer unique prompts with constraints of niche but is lacking in connecting concepts from other unrelated ideas.
Comment down below if you agree with this analysis or if you had a different take!