This post about AI and ChatGPT for magicians was originally produced for the Dallas Magic Club newsletter.
In the evolving world of magic, the line between illusion and reality is continually being blurred by advancements in technology.
Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI), a powerful tool that is now making its way into the realm of both amateur and professional magic. By integrating AI into their acts, magicians can create more personalized, interactive, and mind-bending experiences for their audiences.
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Did you catch it? If you didn’t, don’t worry.
By “it,” I’m referring to the cheeky bit of having ChatGPT write those first three sentences (don’t worry, the rest is me, Adan, from here on out).
To be clear, I simply opened up the app and asked it to “Write the first three sentences of an article introducing amateur and professional magicians to the idea of using AI in magic.” It pumped out that text immediately and I plonked it right in here without any editing whatsoever.
One wonders what one could do – nay, what’s already being done all around us – which is essentially an extension of this workflow. How many emails, newsletters, and financial reports are now being written by ChatGPT? And imagine that people are actually taking the time to edit and craft the text and images it produces…are you sure you would recognize when something had been drafted by AI?
It’s not just that AI is going to change the world around us irreversibly – it’s that it already has. We can hem and haw and lament those changes, or we can embrace them and ride the wave.
Right now, people are awakening to this notion across every industry, in every corner of the world. Discussions go back and forth, trying to decide whether the AI revolution is a frontier or an abyss – regardless, there’s a feeling of nervousness alongside the dazzling thrill that comes with peering into the unknown.
Now, let’s get to the point here – how can we start riding this wave, as magicians?
This series will go into a few emerging use cases for AI in magic. By the end of it, you’ll be creating automated practice audiences, and designing your own professional grade visuals for print…
…but for this first installment, let’s start somewhere a little closer to home.
ChatGPT as a Creative Tool: Designing a Routine
Let’s try and use ChatGPT to come up with a basic routine.
Remember, ChatGPT is a generative AI and an example of a Large Language Model – this means that, after being fed billions and billions of pieces of information, ChatGPT can essentially “pretend” to give answers like a well-educated human being.
So, when thinking, what can we do with ChatGPT?, we might as well ask ourselves, what could we do with an on-hand expert in any subject matter?
And by the way, don’t feel like you need to pay for the most advanced version of ChatGPT; the free one is fine to start out with.
A is for AI, B is for Brainstorm
Sometimes, to get out of the magician’s mindset, you have to go to lay audiences; in other words, the material that ChatGPT was trained on.
If you asked a non-magician friend what magic they would like to see, their response might surprise you. Perhaps they would not ask for a complex, storytelling card trick, or for an expensive, world-class stage illusion gizmo.
They might say something like “make a rabbit appear,” or even “take my ring, make it disappear in a ball of fire, and reappear in my pocket!”
While this kind of ideation from lay audiences could easily be disregarded as cursory, if we stop for a moment, we’ll realize they’re telling us exactly what they want to see.
Imagine if you DID make a rabbit appear. Or even if you took that line of thinking and applied it somewhere else – a coin unexpectedly transforming into a rabbit figurine, or maybe the production of a different living thing. And there are any number of ways to accomplish the latter effect of the vanishing ring, fire, and pocket production.
The point being, feedback from lay audiences can be helpful if we actually listen. ChatGPT can be a recreation of a lay audience (it can also imitate a magician speaker, but more on that later…)
We can use this to brainstorm new ideas and break out of our “magician’s mind.” As I sit here writing this, here are the first ideas that ChatGPT popped out.
Prompt: Design a street magic routine that would wow audiences
(This is a very barebones prompt to serve as our first example. Generally though, the more details you can use, the better.)
What ChatGPT gave me in response was rather interesting – a routine called The Elemental Mysteries:
- Opener: Card Prediction – a snappy card opener with a suggestion to emphasize an interesting reveal.
- Element of Water: The Floating Leaf – magician pours water in a bowl, balances a leaf on it, and moves it with his mind.
In my experience, this method really blows, but I have to admit, I’ve never seen it done with an object floating in water. Pretty interesting.
- Element of Fire: The Burning Paper – spectator writes a secret wish on a piece of paper, which the magician folds and burns, before somehow revealing that the message has vanished or “transformed into a piece of charred cloth, symbolizing the magic of fire.”
Alright, so this one is kind of half-baked. ChatGPT seems to have combined aspects of mentalism with a torn and restored premise…the end result is unclear, but hey, audiences do love fire.
- Element of Earth: The Vanishing Sand – the magician shows sand, then makes it vanish. ChatGPT suggests folding the sand into a handkerchief, but most of us can probably come up with a better method that gets the “thumbs up.”
Regardless, vanishing sand or salt can be a hard-hitting and easy-to-understand moment of magic.
- Closer: Elemental Fusion – the magician explains that magic is about bringing different elements together. He asks for a volunteer’s hand, and sprinkles in some water and sand. The volunteer closes their hand, and when they open it, a beautiful crystal has formed from the elements.
This effect, again, is a bit halfway done. There are a few questions that need answering, but still, the idea of ending with an in-the-hands transformation isn’t bad.
So what did we get out of this? Well, it’s certainly not a polished professional routine – but there are some real moments of magic to consider in there. Additionally, the initial premise of demonstrating “elemental” types of magic is actually pretty engaging.
You can tweak ChatGPT’s output by trying different prompts – I also tried asking for “a short walkaround close-up magic routine to impress audiences that doesn’t use cards. It should have a quick opener, a strong closer, and something good in the middle.”
Here, I’m giving ChatGPT more detailed guidelines, and the result is a more targeted product: ChatGPT recommended opening with Crazy Man’s Handcuffs (which it called “The Magic Rubber Band”), then following up with a one coin routine, before closing with a borrowed ring on string routine.
You can think of ChatGPT like a great intern – it may not always perform perfectly the first time, but with your guidance, it can accomplish great things.
Warning: I’m putting a warning here for the magic community at large: it remains to be seen what this means for the question of exposure. When I input the prompt, how can I make a dollar bill disappear and reappear inside a lemon, ChatGPT responds with detailed instructions including references to sleights and gimmicks.
As magicians, we have to be aware of this and adapt accordingly. Time and the march of progress wait for no man or woman, magician or otherwise.
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This is only the first post of the series, but I hope it gets some ideas flowing. There’s a vast array of possibilities ahead of us when it comes to using AI in magic.
In order to keep it simple this time around, I went with ChatGPT’s first output each time, without going back to revise or tweak what it produced. And while those products may not be perfect, they certainly say a lot about how quickly AI is advancing, and where it could be headed.
And remember – all of this is just brainstorming. YOU are the human, and anything that ChatGPT creates at your behest is ultimately still subject to your scrutiny, revision, and editing.
In future posts, I’ll be breaking down deeper AI-and-magic related subjects. We’ll talk about doing mentalist-style readings, and dialing up your learning to warp-speed. We’ll talk about creating professional graphic designs instantly and effortlessly, and you’ll even learn how to set up your own AI practice spectator, so you can stop bugging your friends and family when you want to try out new effects…
All that and more, down the line. Until then, happy transformations, and enjoy the wave!