Greetings adventurers,

This post is, unfortunately, not written by the incredible, mind-blowing technology that is ChatGPT's language model AI. Just by me.

We originally came up with this idea over a year ago as an April Fools joke and Razmael (ambitious and insane as ever) recently toiled away at making it into a reality, painstakingly teaching the AI about Aetolia while the rest of us tried our best to persuade it to break its rules and help us plan violent uprisings of New Zealand (among other things).

Over the last 24 hours we've witnessed some incredible conversations, hilarious exchanges, brand new lore being invented from thin air (Hail Var-ma-mihn, the Celestine!) and, again, completely mind blowing content, both impressive and terrifyingly portentous in equal measure. For those sceptics still out there, let me be clear: barring the initial instructions and information provided to get it up and running, all the content generated by the NPCs over the last 24 hours has come directly from the ChatGPT AI, not from volunteers or staff piloting them.

Some of you have faced down overzealous guards. Others have endured insult after insult from "friendly" neighbourhood NPCs. Many of you have been threatened, entertained, interrogated, and talked at relentlessly. Still others have made friends and acquaintances that might well last beyond this April Fools dalliance.

From our side we've witnessed an overwhelmingly positive reaction and an outpouring of support for which we're incredibly grateful. We've even had a few people create characters to check it out after hearing about this from other IRE veterans.

Unfortunately, however, it does have to come to an end. The API charges for the use of this service on a word by word basis, and sustaining it for more than a single day is, I'm sorry to say, not realistic - at least for now. AI technology is rapidly evolving and something like this may return in the future when it's a less expensive endeavour to train and operate.

Penned by my hand on Quensday, the 10th of Variach, in the year 509 MA.