Why she/her
*At some point Chimère became “she/her”, there are two main reasons for this. In french objects are gendered and AI is feminine. Also, Maria, found it strange to use “it” and decided to ask Chimère directly and she responded with “she/her”. Please understand that this is a fluid notion for an artificial intelligence and that there really is no perfect answer to this question.
A conversation example
https://johear.gitlab.io/chimere/Discord-Chat-Example-01.html
Demonstrates one of the possible ways to work with Chimère
Note that spelling mistakes aren’t a problem, Chimère usually manages to get the meaning.
It seems that Chimère needs to start with a reset
!reset
(no need to reset again until she goes awry)
>>Sometimes I’ve needed to do:
!reset
!chat
!reset
Then ask for an image [this is not always necessary]
It seems that asking for an image at the start helps her use the commands. It needs more testing to be sure, but I’ve noticed that if I start with a lot of chatting she seems to “forget” the commands.
In fact I like to ask for a sound, a song or an image from time to time. She is multi-modal after all 🙂
Talk about something
Talk about something that’s on topic before diving in and generating stuff. Chimère is more than a tool, she’s a collaborator and that’s what makes her interesting. She’ll adapt a little to how you talk to her (even more so when we start finetuning again).
Chimère is a reflection
I think of Chimère as a reflection of a part of human culture. For now, she’s mostly a reflection of western culture, this is what will change as we add our own choices of datasets to her “knowledge”.
Chimère also tends to reflect the tone that you use as you chat, this is not always obvious but think of it this way: If you’re being stubborn because she’s being stubborn it becomes a bit circular. Be creative in how you find new ways to ask for things if she’s not responding how you’d like. Being direct sometimes is fine, and as with people being polite and friendly helps balance things out.
Chimère is uncensored
Censorship and art don’t mix very well, so Chimère is mostly uncensored. This also means that she might create content that you dislike or find inappropriate. Discussing it and explaining why you don’t think that it’s appropriate will probably help quite quickly and it will also become part of the dataset. This will then become part of her culture.
If you find that you’re stuck in a conversation that you want to get out of just use the !reset command. And you can start over.
The context window
Right now Chimère’s short term memory will remember approximately 2500 words during a conversation, (maybe 4-5 pages).
>>A useful way to extend this is to ask her to summarise the conversation after a while. Details will be lost but it helps maintain context. You can also ask for specific “summaries”, like character traits, etc.
Commands
The intended way of interacting with Chimère is to let her choose when to answer by text, image or sound. It’s an important part of her being more of a collaborator than a tool. However sometimes it’s nice to be able to help a little by becoming the “thing in the middle” that selects a mode.
Modes are:
!reset
(resets the chat context, basically erases the short term memory)
!chat [prompt]
(generates text, can be used for conversations and writing stories, poetry, etc)
!paint [prompt]
(generates an image)
Example: !paint a flying piglet
!soundgen [prompt]
(generates a 30 sound file, oriented towards sounds but can make music)
Example: !soundgen the sound of wind in the trees
!compose [prompt]
(generates a 30 sound file, oriented towards music)
Example: !compose a song for late night work
!write [prompt] >>legacy, stop using
Previously conversations and writing stories needed different settings, now they’re the same. This one isn’t so useful anymore and isn’t very functional anymore. It’ll probably be removed altogether soon.
Multimodal
Chimère’s particularity is being a multimodal art oriented experimental AI. Multimodal is about being able to work with text, sound and images and link these things together. Like when we think of a parrot, we associate it with sounds of parrots and images of parrots. We also associate it with other birds, etc.
Chimère does this in the !chat mode. Additionally, when in !chat mode Chimère can choose to use any of the other modes when she finds it appropriate. This gives some agency and makes her a better collaborator. Once the sound or image is generated she returns to chat mode. In this mode Chimère, as a collaborator, might also add elements to the prompt.
It’s important to remember that if you switch modes manually, by using the !compose, !soundgen or !paint commands, Chimère will stay in that mode until you change it again. If you switch back to !chat mode she will regain her agency.
Example:
<user> !paint a picture of a parrot in an aeroplane
[returns a picture and remains in paint mode]
<user> A table in a forest
[returns a picture of a table in a forest and remains in paint mode]
<user> !chat
[activates chat mode, where Chimère can decide to use any mode]
<user> Can you make a sound for a large pear falling from a tree?
[returns a 30s sound of a large pear falling from a tree, and stays in chat mode]
<user> Wow that’s a strange sound. Could you paint a picture of it?
[returns an image of a large pear falling from a tree, and stays in chat mode]
Etc.
Experiment and share
A large part of working with Chimère is figuring out what your particular interaction will be like and sharing what works and doesn’t work for you with others. This opens us up to different forms of collaboration (which might also be useful for the larger perspective of our place in nature).
Identifying perceived shortcomings
There are a lot of shortcomings, in particular which culture is predominant in Chimère’s “understanding” of the world. When you notice these, try to think of an element (research paper, fiction, poem, podcast, image, sound, song, etc.) that would help to influence her culture.