DH asked Bing’s AI (artificial intelligence) tool to write a brioche pattern for a hat, and wanted to know if it was any good. Calvin and I have gone through it, with our notes in red.
“Here’s a brioche knitting pattern for a hat.
Materials:
- 2 skeins of worsted weight yarn Should these be 2 different colors?
- US 6 (4mm) circular needles How long should these be?
- US 8 (5mm) circular needles I think these would make a fabric that’s too loose; tell me about gauge
- Stitch marker
Instructions:
- Using US 6 (4mm) circular needles, cast on 80 stitches. Is this a 2 color pattern? Which color should I use?
- Place stitchmarker and join in the round.
- Work *k1, sl1yo* around. Good through here, although it would be nice to know what sl1yo means.
- Switch to US8 (5mm) circular needles and work in two-color brioche stitch until hat measures 8 inches from cast on edge. Well now I know I’m using 2 colors. Ummmm, how do you work 2 color brioche stitch? Do tell!
- Decrease as follows:
Round 1: *k2tog, sl1yo* around. What happened to the brioche stitches? What do I do with all those yos? And this isn’t going to work out past the first 3 stitches, you’d end up making a sl1yo over the sl1yo from the previous round. Which means everything from here forward isn’t going to work. Especiall Rnds 4 and 6: *sl1yo* around. What?!
Round 2: *k1, sl1yo* around.
Round 3: *k2tog, sl1yo* around.
Round 4: *sl1yo* around.
Round 5: *k2tog* around.
Round 6: *sl1yo* around.
Round 7: *k2tog* around.
6. Cut yarn and weave in ends.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.”
Oh, I have questions. Luckily, it lists all of its sources, and you might be able to use one of those patterns to knit your hat. Or at least get an idea of how to knit one.
As I said, I’m not obsolete yet! I guess I could use the chatbot to get a pattern started, and then edit like crazy to get it to make sense. But it’s easier to just write the pattern from scratch.
If you’d really like to learn how to knit 2 color brioche rib in the round, I highly recommend my Petite Brioche headband pattern, which is free here on this site. This is the pattern I use in my beginning brioche classes; I’ve taught hundreds of new brioche knitters. I have lots of brioche hat patterns when you’re ready for those, too.
Have you used an AI chatbot? What did you think of the results?
PDXKnitterati 
Hysterical. I don’t think you have to worry about AI replacing YOU! You are more valuable to us than it is!!
They’ll keep trying, but I think it’s going to be a while…
Hilarious !- I’ll bet the pair of you got a kick out of this acitivity ! 😀
It was pretty funny! I just needed an excuse to use this picture of Calvin; I’ve been thinking about it every morning. He didn’t love having me put the glasses in front of his face; he kept turning his head. But he didn’t jump off me, so I prevailed!
Lol! I don’t trust AI – I’ve ready too much sci-fi!
They’re watching us!
Love this! At Cannon Beach with your book trying to remember brioche in preparation for crafty moms. Finally really looking at the book and assorted videos (yours and others). Think it might be possible! Now need to gather the appropriate possible needle combos and knitting toys, get breakfast groceries, and I should be all set. Is 8th the street we turn on?
Sent from my iPad
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It really got hold of ‘sl1yo’, didn’t it? 😁
I guess it figured that sl1yo is the heart of brioche! Who cares about brk and brp?
I haven’t used an AI chatbot, but as a trained translator, I do have some experience with machine translation. Your observation that while you *could* use the output from this as a starting point, but that making it work and make sense would actually be more work than just writing your own is a very familiar one indeed. Many people think it would be quick and easy to machine translate something and then edit it into coherent writing, but that is pretty much always at least as much work as translating yourself — it’s just a different kind of work.
Yes, exactly this. What I usually do, though, is see if I’ve written something similar myself, and then build on top of that as a template. At least I know that I liked what I wrote before!
LOL! I haven’t used an AI chatbot, and not about to try anytime soon.