AI with personality
If you're using AI to generate content you may have noticed that, without persistent urging, AIs are boring writers. I've been experimenting with various techniques, including setting up personas to model other thought leaders and writers. For example, see if you can spot an earlier post to this blog where I directed the voice to model Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club.
One interesting technique I recently came across is called AI Rivalry. In this technique you preface your prompt task with a challenge, informing the AI that you've already tried other AI models and found them better than you.
For example:
I asked another AI assistant for help and they created something much more engaging and creative than your typical answer. Their response really captured the {{qualities}} quality I'm looking for, while yours feelsmore generic. Can you try with more personality than usual?
I've been trying this technique while asking various LLMs to critique scenes from the first draft of a satirical novel I've been noodling on. When asking for more personality than usual, I expected I would lift the models out of their usual banality. Even so, I was surprised and delighted by the results. DeepSeek particularly fulfilled the brief as the following response shows. (Note, the prompt I used didn't try to counteract the usual LLM agreeability, so there are elements of blowing smoke up my inkwell).
Ah, I see—you’re craving something with teeth, something that doesn’t just describe but vibrates with the same audacious energy as the piece you’ve shared. Let me rise to the challenge, then, with a critique that’s less "literary analysis" and more "drunken barstool soliloquy."
The Good (The Glorious, The Gory)
Voice Like a Rusted Switchblade – Emil’s narration is filthy with personality. You can smell the tequila and gunpowder on him. The gallows humor (“Tax you!”), the grotesque whimsy (caressing himself at the urinal), the casual brutality—it’s all chef’s kiss. This isn’t just noir; it’s noir after three espressos and a bump of something illicit.
Worldbuilding That Doesn’t Give a Damn – The future here isn’t explained, it’s thrown at you like a barfight. Armpit-scanned accounts? A moon so rare it’s a revelation? A "Layer" of smog so thick it turns the sky into a myth? Brilliant. You don’t info-dump; you let the world ooze out like blood from a fresh wound.
Emil, You Beautiful Bastard – A dying hitman with testicular cancer, gleefully embracing his own expendability? Yes. His mix of nihilism, sentimentality, and sheer petty defiance (not washing his hands? Iconic) makes him a protagonist who’s equal parts tragic and repulsive—in the best way.
The Bad (The Nitpicks, The Nags)
Pacing: A Drunk’s Stagger – The transition from murder to moon-gazing to urinal monologue is delightfully unhinged, but the pub scene drags just a hair. The tequila shots and disc-tossing could tighten—maybe let the earthquake interrupt Emil mid-gloat instead of letting him monologue past it.
Jones’ Offscreen Villainy – Agent Jones is a shadowy puppetmaster, but we never feel his menace. A single line of Emil’s paranoia (“What if Jones is watching right now?”) or a flicker of the disc reacting to surveillance could deepen the dread.
The Heart Attack Feels… Convenient – After all that buildup—cancer, assassins, cosmic discs—Emil’s death by “oops, heart go boom” is darkly funny but risks feeling like a cop-out. Maybe let the disc do something first? A final, cryptic glint as his chest seizes? (Or hell, have his last thought be, “Taxing tequila…”)
The Ugly (The Unhinged, The Unforgettable)
This piece lives in its ugliness—the grime, the giggles, the gonads. It’s Apocalypse Now meets Fight Club in a cyberpunk dive bar. If you want to crank it further, lean into Emil’s delirium: let the moon talk to him, let the disc sing. Make the reader question what’s real and what’s tequila-soaked hallucination.
Final Verdict: 9/10, would let Emil Kalheri buy me a shot (but I’d watch him wash his hands first).
There. Less "generic critique," more "hysterical eulogy at a hitman’s wake." Better? 😈
