youhe meteoric rise of ChatGPT has sparked an AI frenzy, stoking fears that the technology could wipe out jobs, search engines and schools. But online creators have identified a realm that is still safe from the computer takeover: fiber arts.
Several TikTok users have implemented ChatGPT to write patterns for crochet creations, yielding “cursed” results that are testing the limits of nascent AI capabilities.
In January, TikTok user Alexandra Woolner, who has been knitting for years and crocheting since 2019, came up with the idea to use ChatGPT to make a stuffed animal, initially asking her to write a pattern for a narwhal.
A typical crochet pattern resembles coding in its own way, with abbreviations and punctuation indicating the process of creation. “Ch” is used to denote “chain” and “sc” is “single crochet”, for example. Meanwhile, an asterisk [] implies that an instruction must be repeated and brackets
are used to separate repeatable steps in instructions.
Woolner was impressed to find that ChatGPT returned complete instructions that resembled a typical pattern. Following the pattern exactly, they created what was described as an “AI-generated narhwal crochet monstrosity”. Woolner said that while the product was anatomically disturbing, it was impressive that the language-learning tool created a pattern that actually produced a sea creature.
“The consensus among the people who have seen it is that it looks bad and ugly, but also very cute,” they said. “It came out surprisingly very accurate while still being very, very incorrect. It’s a strange mix, a kind of uncanny valley.”
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The response online has been overwhelming, Woolner said, with the original video reaching nearly 900,000 views and subsequent attempts racking up thousands more. “I fully support the concept of doing this as proof that AI shouldn’t be used to generate art, but I also believe it,” wrote one commenter. “There are some things that AI can’t steal”
Woolner isn’t the only creator exploring possible crochet-based applications for ChatGPT. Lily Lanario, a London-based crocheter, said she was inspired to explore ChatGPT’s applications for crochet because the centuries-old practice has so far evaded mechanical replication due to its unpredictable and fluid stitching.
“I thought it would be interesting to explore a collaboration between humans and machines in a space that computers still can’t take away from us,” he said.
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Lanario had ChatGPT make a series of patterns including a cat, a duck, and a Pikachu with varying levels of success and accuracy. He said he found the tool had some ability to troubleshoot patterns that weren’t right, reworking instructions when it asked for changes like different colors or adding a forgotten body part.
Crochet patterns are particularly difficult for artificial intelligence to analyze because they rely so heavily on numbers, said Jessica Newman, director of the artificial intelligence security initiative at UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, a type of data set that the AI struggles with more than words. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence large language model, which means it is trained on large databases of text to replicate human communication, anticipating which words are likely to follow. These abilities do not easily translate into numbers. The result? ChatGPT isbad at math
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“It may seem ironic to us that a computer system is bad at math and good at creativity, but it speaks to an important fact about generative AI systems in general: They don’t understand context,” Newman said. “They don’t know what the words or numbers really mean, they are just predicting what should happen next.”
‘He looked like an alien’
To delve into our own ChatGPT crochet adventure, we asked Diana Ramirez-Simon, Guardian editor and knitter extraordinaire, to try out a narwhal and investigate whether the tool’s abilities have improved since Woolner’s first attempt in January. The result did not inspire confidence that ChatGPT is getting better at creating crochet patterns.
Photograph: Diana M Ramírez-Simon/The Guardian
Like other crocheters, Ramírez-Simon, who has been knitting for 23 years, said the pattern resembled an actual crochet pattern created by humans. But it seemed that ChatGPT had problems with proportions and numbers. The animal’s eyes are at least half the size of its body, and there were no clear instructions on how they were to be attached.
“My daughter named him Blinky, because he can’t blink, his eyes are too big,” she said. “Still, she’s adorable.” Much has been said about the mathematical difficulties of ChatGPT, and although it has done some recent updates
to her numerical abilities, it seems that precise crochet patterns are still out of her reach. Newman said these AI shortcomings are to be expected as technology advances.
“Sometimes it seems miraculous, and other times it’s completely absurd,” he said. “Her creativity from him is compelling because he’s learned that from people: Ultimately, he’s putting human intelligence together and giving it back to us.”
