I am doing a day of experimenting with generative AI tools. I’m seeing what is possible, how hard it is to do, and of course, what barriers or costs are involved.
I found a site, Syllaby, that allowed me to make one free video from text prompts. It didn’t end up exactly how I envisioned it, but it was free.
I then asked Gemini to give me an appropriate Shakespeare for the penguin. It just listed a bunch of characters, but then offered two puns. One of which was William Shakesbeak.
Voila
I then asked Gemini to write a soliloquy appropriate for a penguin to deliver:
(The stage is bare, save for an icy chill that seems to drift from the wings. WILLIAM SHAKESBEAK waddles downstage centre, pauses, lifts his beak toward the heavens, and spreads his flippers in grave contemplation.)
SHAKESBEAK:
To molt, or not to molt—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous blizzards,
Or to take flippers against a sea of troubles,
And by descending, drown them? To plunge—to dive—
No more; and by that dive to say we end
The belly-ache, and the thousand natural squalls
That blubber’s heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To plunge, to dive;
To dive, perchance to feed! Ay, there’s the rub;
For in that icy trench, what beasts may lurk,
When we have shuffled off this frozen shelf:
The spotted seal, the killer in the deep,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long a march!
For who would bear the nip of polar winds,
The skua’s spite, the haughty gull’s contumely,
The pangs of regurgitated fare denied,
The law’s delay when huddled in the gale,
When he himself might his quietus make
Upon a single pebble?
Who would these fardels bear, to grunt and waddle
Beneath a weary tuxedo’d life,
Save that the dread of something in the brine—
The undiscover’d fathom, from whose depths
No diver e’er returns—puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear the frost we have
Than glide to shadows that we know not of?
Thus hunger doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of sleekest down
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of rime,
While great enterprises of herring-catch
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of belly-flop.
Soft you now!
The fair rookery! Lady, in thy squawks
Be all my krill remember’d.