arvind sanjeev’s AI-powered typewriter enables interactivity between man and machine 

arvind sanjeev ponders co-creation with ai

Following the exponential growth and overwhelming emergence of new AI products, Arvind Sanjeev creates an intervention that allows us to take a moment to reflect on this new creative relationship we are forming with machines. The Ghostwriter is a project that invites us to slow down our interactions and mindfully co-create with AI through a vintage typewriter’s tactile and physical form. Its calm, meditative interface removes all digital distractions and takes users on an emotional journey through paper and ink. By urging conscious, slowed down interactions with the machine, Sanjeev argues that this lets us become more deliberate with our prompts and pulls us to read each word one after the other, helping us understand the nuances profoundly.

The Ghostwriter is a transmuted iteration of a vintage Brother typewriter, which was reverse engineered and optimized to become powered by Open AI’s GPT-3 language model. Any prompt can be entered through the typewriter, and upon hitting the return key, an original response is generated from the AI. Inside is an Arduino that decodes the user’s prompts and shares it with a raspberry pi which queries the GPT-3 API.

Ghostwriter: GPT3 AI Typewriter

An amalgamation of his learnings while teaching AI to creatives, designer Arvind Sanjeev’s Ghostwriter questions and redefines the relationship between man and machine. Through his classes, talks, and workshops, the definitive question which arose was: when is AI going to come for them? These discussions and debates sparked the opportunity for an intervention that speaks to it.

‘But first I wanted to ground them through a mental model they feel connected and comfortable with,’ notes Sanjeev. They then settled on the form of a typewriter for their experimentation. The machine’s slow analog interface helps writers focus only on the content and protects them from digital distractions. ‘This seemed to be the perfect meditative interface that could help people experience AI at a slow pace, allowing them to absorb all the nuances of the machine mindfully,’ he continues.

After the initial pessimism from skeptics — those usually intimidated by the presence of ‘Big Tech’, particularly in the creative fields — people from all demographics started reaching out via social media and sharing their own prompts for the Ghostwriter. ‘Ghostwriter is thus slowly creating awareness of this new human-machine relationship and how AI is just a glorified brush that a painter can use to tell their stories. The story and human problems will always be the center of any successful work, regardless of whether it is realized through AI or not,’ concludes Arvind Sanjeev.

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project info:

name: Ghostwriter: GPT3 AI Typewriter
designer: Arvind Sanjeev

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