How to improve your Halloween costume

Janelle Shane -

I've amused myself before by getting GPT-3 to change one kind of text into another. With just a few style-change examples, I got it to change the Winnie the Pooh theme song into this:

In the uncanny depths of the Hundred Acre Wood
is the place where the great wizard Christopher Robin plays.
If you are fool enough to enter, you will find the enchanted place
where he first came into the fullness of his power.
The great wizard is accompanied by Eeyore, a donkey of great power
As well as the famous Kanga and that which is called Roo. We shall not speak of Tigger.
There is also Rabbit, and Piglet, a mighty duo feared across these lands,
and, of course, there is Owl, also known as The Silent Feathered Death.
But the greatest of them all is Winnie the Pooh.
Winnie the Pooh! Tremble to pronounce his name!
The Great Bear, whose deeds speak for themselves.
Yes, Winnie the Pooh! Speak the power of the Pooh.
Ubiquitous, unpredictable, and terribly ancient.

Most of my other text style transfer attempts didn't work quite this well. But after experimenting with GPT-3 for more than a year, I thought I was getting to know its quirks well enough to give it another try. Specifically, another spooky try.

And after concocting a few examples for it to follow, I found I was getting GPT-3 DaVinci to (sometimes) change a short phrase to match an adjective. I have now put it to work improving common Halloween costumes!

Input:
I'm dressing as a pumpkin for Halloween!
Scarier:
I am the Pumpkin King, the owl ruler of all beasts, the bringer of eternal darkness, the Master of 1000 Corpses.
Input:
I'm dressing as a cat for Halloween!
Scarier:
"I will spend this Hallow's Eve as a harmless house cat.
Input:
I'm dressing as a vampire for Halloween!
More impressive:
I shall be displaying my vampiric prowesses at a Halloween carnaval gala on a black a moonless night caparisoned capriciously in a cape, a cowl, a cape accentuated with a collar and a collar that is black, a tailcoat, a batwinged bat-sleeve bat-wing bat-collared batwing batwing batwing batwing batwing
Input:
I'm dressing as a princess for Halloween!
More interesting:
You are preparing to confront the powerful Uber Faerie, one of the rulers of the week, he who commands the forces of week, including faeries, goblins, toadstools, lampposts, and fleas. It is to be your first confrontation with him, and you are secretly afraid.
Input:
I'm dressing as a witch for Halloween!
More unusual:
I'm dressing as a wicked witch, but no costume is complete without lots of sexy accessories, including a flying broom, a poison apple, and a talking hand-puppet duck.
Input:
I'm dressing as a robot for Halloween!
More impressive:
I am constructing an exocortex. Expect me to appear at your door any hour of the night, your blood frozen in your veins, offering you swarms of nanobots to gird your skills, terabytes of thought fermenting in your hippocampus, seeking out your fears and smashing them, your shadow a shadow no more.

I also tried this experiment with the smallest GPT-3 model, Ada, but it wasn't quite as good at it.

Input:
I'm dressing as a ghost for Halloween!
Scarier:
My cousin Magdalena has disappeared. She is hoodwinking us all.
Input:
I'm dressing as a vampire for Halloween!
More impressive:
You need to fix your math before you can accurately read the papers.
Input:
I'm dressing as a unicorn for Halloween!
Improved:
Remember you are the Lord of the Fall
By the giant armadillo

Bonus content: a few more GPT-3 text edits on things besides costumes, such as:

Input:
The program could not start because MSVCR100.dll was missing.
Scarier:
The program could not start because MSVCR100.dll was missing. Beware, the devil lies in this file, masquerading as a function to help your computer. Protect yourself by taking a hammer and smashing this file into a gazillion pieces and disposing of them in a landfill on a cold, moonless night.