In which AI gets sued by Disney

Years ago, I wrote an (unfinished) novel for National Novel Writing Month that involved a parallel dimension. I never had a good title for it, and used the clunky working title “Start of the World”, which sounds a bit like a bad translation. Then I thought, why use my brain to come up with a title when I can ask an AI chat program to do the mental lifting for me?

It turns out the answer is because it comes up with incredibly banal titles. Or maybe my prompts suck. In any case, I asked ChatGPT for 10 titles and #10 would likely to result in a call from Disney’s legal department¹Actually, tittles can’t be trademarked, but try telling that to Disney less than a year after the second Dr. Strange movie..

Give me 10 titles for horror novels that involve alternate dimensions

1. “The Shadow Realm”
2. “Parallel Terrors”
3. “Through the Void”
4. “Twisted Realities”
5. “The Other Side”
6. “Gateway to Horror”
7. “The Fourth Dimension of Fear”
8. “Infinite Nightmares”
9. “Beyond the Veil”
10. “The Multiverse of Madness”

These are all so bland, I wouldn’t use any of them. Yes, even the one Disney actually used. Undaunted, I asked ChatGPT to give me 10 more:

1. “Dimensional Descent”
2. “The Darker Side”
3. “Alternate Realms of Horror”
4. “The Otherworldly Terror”
5. “Twilight Dimensions”
6. “The Doppelgänger Effect”
7. “The Abyssal Gate”
8. “The Haunted Multiverse”
9. “The Sinister Parallel”
10. “Terror from Beyond”

A few of these are not horrible, but they’re all still incredibly generic. I especially like the on-the-nose “Alternate Realms of Horror.” That’s a novel name that is very much “what it says on the tin.” Maybe the prompt itself was too generic. I tweaked it a little. Probably too little.

Give me 10 titles for a modern horror novel featuring parallel dimensions

1. “Interdimensional Nightmare”
2. “The Multiverse Horror”
3. “Parallel Panic”
4. “Beyond Our World”
5. “The Alternate Abyss”
6. “Dread Dimensions”
7. “The Parallel Paradox”
8. “The Multidimensional Menace”
9. “The Terrifying Twinverse”
10. “Portals of Horror”

These are also pretty uninspired, but I like the alliteration it leaned into, especially for “Parallel Panic” and “Dread Dimensions”. “The Terrifying Twinverse” made me laugh, so there’s that.

I’ll try this again at some point when I can think of a prompt that will at least produce bizarre results, if nothing else.