A Novelist and an AI Cowrote Your Next Cringe-Read

Last week, while giving a graduation speech at New York University, pop star Taylor Swift gave a timely piece of advice, "No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe." Swift is correct that cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime. We live in cringe-y times. Why don't you?

She is not the only artist who cringes. Los Angeles-based writer K. Allado-McDowell's new novel is a love letter to maximalism. Allado-McDowell set out to write the cringiest story possible and ended up creating an odd, surprisingly funny little book. The plot is not much different from a message about trying to find God. The unnamed narrator lives in a TikTok house and thinks too much about the internet. These guys are replaced by a man with an English accent and a girl with huge breasts. What could be more embarrassing?

The book feels like a rave where everyone else is having a bad trip. It is also the result of a unique writing process. Allado-McDowell has a deep understanding of artificial intelligence, which is why she established the Artists + Machine Intelligence program. Their first book is a conversation between Allado-McDowell and the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3. This isn't the first time Allado-McDowell has collaborated with GPT-3, but it is a step forward in their process. Allado-McDowell mixed their words with GPT's writing to create a singular narrative voice.

WIRED talked with Allado-McDowell and GPT-3 about what it was like to work with each other, and what it means to be cringe.

Allado-McDowell's answers are below in standard text, while GPT-3's answers are in italics. This interview was lightly edited for clarity and length.

The back of your book says it is intended to be cringe-inducing. Do you have a unified theory of cringe?

Allado-McDowell is a term that originated on the internet. It refers to online behavior that makes an observer cringe. My theory of cringe is that it is a side effect of our social nature. We cringe because we empathise with the embarrassment that others feel or that we think they should feel. This is an intersubjective connection that social media allows us to feel.