When Alexandra Woolner, who has been knitting for years and crocheting since 2019, had the idea to use ChatGPT to make a narwhal amigurumi pattern, she was pretty surprised with the result!
No doubt that ChatGPT delivered instructions that, at first glance, resembled normal pattern instructions, with that almost alien language that we very well know knitting and crochet patterns have, with all the abbreviations, numbers, asterisks, different types of parentheses, and even its own grammatical structure.
But when she sat down with her hook and yarn and started crocheting, following the pattern instructions exactly, the final result was a surprise. It had an anatomically awkward shape but was presented as a sea creature.
Knitting and crochet patterns rely heavily on numbers. According to Jessica Newman, director of the artificial intelligence security initiative at UC Berkeley's Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, that’s a problem as AI is developed around texts and predicting which words come after each other. It's mind-blowing that AI struggles with numbers more than words!
Woolner named her amigurumi creature Gerald and shared her process on a TikTok video, which went viral. Most viewers feel it’s the wrong figure, although it’s still cute.
Alexandra Woolner is not alone in this endeavor. TikTok is already filled with videos showing what ChatGPT can do for crochet and knitting projects.
For now, we don't have to worry because the results have not been good, but not for long! Artificial Intelligence applications are just beginning, and it shares something with us humans: the ability to learn. Let's see what the future brings!
