Can ChatGPT Help Write Historical Fiction?

Here are the results of an experiment I ran

Image generated by the Author via MidJourney

The following is an experiment involving ChatGPT. Therefore, some of the content herein is AI-generated.

I love history. I also love writing fiction. But the reason I haven’t written much in the way of historical fiction is that my time is limited and historical fiction takes a lot of research time.

But now we are in the Age of AI.

ChatGPT can do a lot of the historical research work for us, right?

That’s the basis of this experiment.

I have a ChatGPT Plus account. I decided to open a new conversation and give it this prompt:

PROMPT: You are an expert in history and an award-winning author of historical fiction novels. I’m going to give you a simple scene with two men talking about marriage problems. You are then going to set that scene in different time periods based on prompts I give you. You will incorporate realistic items and elements of that historical period into the background of that scene. Does that make sense?

ChatGPT responded with a “Got it!” but I decided to add something more…

PROMPT: Let me add one more bit of instruction… You need to adjust the names, clothing, and dialogue and…