TextFX is a Google artificial intelligence (AI) application created for rappers, writers, and wordsmiths alike. As part of their Google Lab Sessions, where they experiment with AI technology in collaboration with innovators, American rapper Lupe Fiasco was selected to "explore specifically how AI could expand human creativity."
In the accompanying video, Fiasco worked with Aaron Wade, a Creative Technologist at Google. They delved into linguistics with the help of PaLM API, "deconstructing language and then reassembling it in novel and innovative ways," much of which is the basis of Fiasco's educational guild, Society of Spoken Art.[1] During a near two-hour session, he created the song "Glass of Water" as a demonstration.
Description[]
TextFX is an AI experiment that uses Google's PaLM 2 large language model. These 10 tools are designed to expand the writing process by generating creative possibilities with text and language.
Background[]
As part of the experimental process, they used the machine learning model large language models (LLMs) that "are specially designed to perform language-related tasks" in order to generate text. The following ten prompts were created to guide the user:
SIMILE - Create a simile about a thing or concept.
EXPLODE - Break a word into similar-sounding phrases.
UNEXPECT - Make a scene more unexpected and imaginative.
CHAIN - Build a chain of semantically related items.
POV - Evaluate a topic through different points of view.
ALLITERATION - Curate topic-specific words that start with a chosen letter.
ACRONYM - Create an acronym using the letters of a word.
FUSE - Find intersections between two things.
SCENE - Generate sensory details about a scene.
UNFOLD - Slot a word into other words or phrases.
Google released the tool for public use on August 2, 2023. Fiasco dropped his song "Glass of Water" the same day to his YouTube channel, elaborating, "These tools were inspired by some of the lyrical and linguistic techniques I have developed over 20 years of writing Raps. But TextFX won't write Raps for you. Instead, these tools are designed to empower your writing, provide creative possibilities and help you see text in new ways."[2]
Transcript[]
| [Voice offscreen] | Let's just start with some words. |
|---|---|
| Lupe Fiasco | Uh, we got 'mechanic,' 'fight,' 'build,' 'gadzooks,' 'shogun,' 'crush,' 'ziggurat,' 'impala,' 'whiskey.' I froze. You see that? That last one, I froze. See, see, see? [laughs] |
| "Autoboto" starts to play. | |
| Lupe | My name is Wasalu Jaca, AKA Lupe Fiasco. I'm a rapper, professor, a lover and friend of words. I'm a data-gathering machine. |
| Lupe | Rap is born out of technology. Rap wouldn't exist if it wasn't for these technological advancements. DJ'ing, for example, and direct drive turntables. So you're able to be very accurate with breakbeats and stuff like that. Microphones, recording studios. Now you're able to lay more ideas. You only had one track at one point, Now you got four, and now you got eight. Now you got 16. Now it's endless. On top of here is all these special effects that you can do now. Here's all these different sounds that are generated through technology, like the 808. 808 is a lot of science and a lot of math and a lot of physics to create that sound that rap takes as its own. And like, 808 That's rap. Boom. What's next? Artificial intelligence, large language models. Rap's optimal for it. |
| [Voice of researcher] | So you can click right here and everything in this table... |
| Lupe | So I've been working with Google and the Palm API on a large language model-powered set of tools that specifically focus on the writing process of creating raps. |
| Aaron Wade | So initially we thought that maybe Lupe would want an AI system to write lyrics for him, verses and raps, but it turns out that he didn't want that at all. What he wanted was a tool that helped him explore the universe of possibilities that can arise from any given word or phrase or concept. In the beginning of our session, we worked with Lupe to sort of extract some of these techniques that he has been developing over the course of two decades of writing. And one of the things that Lupe will do is he'll take a word and explode it into all these different phonetic possibilities. |
| Lupe | It doesn't have to be anything like, super exotic. It could just be like, "Expressway." You know like, "Expressway..." And then it starts to just go through the machinery... Parsing. How many syllables are in there? How much spin is on "Way?" There's a lot of connotation with "Way." There's way, w-a-y. Wei w-e-i which is referencing like, wu wei—Chinese philosophy about just being. W-e-i-g-h, weigh. Whey, like curds and whey. So now you got this whole dairy thing that's happening. Way, like "That's way out!" You know? And that's just with that end, that suffix. We haven't gotten to "Express." Expressway is a road, then there's like, expressing yourself. Espresso, ex-press, like we exclude the newspaper. Then you got your ex, There's like an ex-girlfriend, an ex-dadadada And then it goes "fwing!" And that's just me driving. Right, driving down the expressway. |
| "Precious Things" plays. | |
| Aaron | What we did is we assembled a data set of all of these different examples of these "Word explosions." What Maker Suite makes it really easy to do is go into the example data, add things, remove things, change things around. Until you get exactly what you're looking for. The result of that is this bite sized AI tool that can take in any word as input, explode it into all these different possibilities in the same way that Lupe does.
And that's just one tool. We built nine others as well. |
| Lupe | It's called TextFX. These tools, they generate similes, they create acronyms, they parse words. It's an entire suite of different kind of possibilities dealing with text and language. I know I want to say, "Held up to the lips of a marauder" but I want to do Explode with "Marauder." 'Merry water,' yeah, 'my raider,' 'more rudder.' That's good. Yeah, I like that. So we'll do that. |
| Lupe | Its real goal was to introduce you to working with language in ways that you probably wouldn't have thought about.
Yo, yo, yo, yeah. All right, cool. |
| Lupe | The joy is in the work, the joy is in the struggle. |
| Lupe | [rapping] ♪ I was more rudderless than a ship ♪ ♪ Without a captain adrift ♪ ♪ On the ocean of life ♪ ♪ No destination in sight ♪ |
| Lupe | One of the things that I wanted to do was not to remove the rapper from the process, but to keep the rapper in the process in a more empowered and more informed way. |
| Lupe | Let me let Unexpect. Kind of figure out what it needs to be. "Glass of water is filled with a live goldfish." Hmm. Yeah, we'll do that.
[rapping] |
| Lupe | If I hit some type of wall, don't knock the wall down. Pick me up a little bit so I can climb over the top. "An umbrella is a hat for the ground." Wowww. Yeah! Pin that. |
| Aaron | Working with Lupe completely revolutionized my idea of what it means to work with language. There really exist worlds of possibilities in the spaces between words in a sentence, or even between letters in a word. I really think that this is where the future of AI is heading, more towards this space of collaboration between humans and machines. |
| Lupe | The more people get to use it, the more they're going to play with it and hack it and expand it and do different things with it, which is what I think is exciting about TextFX. It's a thing, it's a serious thing. You know, but it is an instrument. This is just how I play with it. I'm excited to see how people try and master that instrument. |
| Lupe | [rapping] ♪ As you maraud through the weather that you can't see ♪ ♪ Stick an umbrella in it If you feel fancy ♪ You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's good. That's good. It's some good raps. |
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Wade, Aaron (August 2, 2023). "How It's Made: TextFX Is a Suite of AI Tools Inspired by Lupe Fiasco's Lyrical and Linguistic Techniques". Google Blog.
- ↑ "Lupe Fiasco - Glass of Water - My First Song Co-Written with AI". YouTube. August 2, 2023.
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