In 2021, Vauhini Vara asked OpenAI’s GPT-3 to help her write about her sister. Since her sister’s death, Vara hadn’t been able to do it herself. The then-emerging technology offered an unusual path through the block. 

This was pre-ChatGPT and the resulting text was novel: a piece titled "Ghosts: I didn’t know how to write about my sister’s death—so I had AI do it for me." Vara’s words were published in bold, with GPT-3’s contributions beneath in Courier New. Littered throughout were what we now call hallucinations: AI-generated responses that contain something false presented as fact. But, as the story unfurled, the bold sections lengthened, with the final chapter almost entirely made up of Vara’s own words. 

Illustration by Jesse Zhan, source: Ghosts by Vauhini Vara

The last paragraph was stirring:

“Once upon a time, my sister taught me to read. She taught me to wait for a mosquito to swell on my arm and then slap it and see the blood spurt out. She taught me to insult racists back. To swim. To pronounce English so I sounded less Indian. To shave my legs without cutting myself. To lie to our parents believably.  To do math. To tell stories. Once upon a time, she taught me to exist.”
XRAYS by Lorde

Vara had worked through her grief with the language model, and shared that working with the world. At the time, it was provocative – today, sharing your chatbot interactions is becoming something more practical. It’s proof of effort. In the same way, pop stars are pulling the curtain back on their creative processes, like Charli xcx via her Substack or Lorde dropping a 49-track release of raw recording sessions. Brands too are going to great lengths to prove their marketing is human-made – Apple TV’s new logo was made with sheets of glass and Google’s Mother’s Day doodle used a real baby’s hand. Taking things a step further, people have started publishing their conversations with AI.