How ChatGPT spins jewels

AI and jewellery research

How ChatGPT spins our view on jewellery

Published Jan 22, 2024

ChatGPT, it seems to be everywhere. But what does it know about ethnic jewellery? Is it of any use for jewellery research? I asked it a few things and this is what happened.

ChatGPT: what is it again?

In case you missed it, ChatGPT is a form of artificial intelligence (AI). It gets its information from online sources and processes information up until 2021. So basically, what is does, is it Googles faster than you and I ever could, and reshuffles what it found into an acceptable looking text – in just about as much time as it takes to read this paragraph.

Given the time it takes to do proper research (see 5 oldschool ways I use myself here), and the time it takes to write a blog post, I wanted to know what it would produce if I asked it to come up with text on ethnic jewellery. You don’t need a degree in psychology to see the underlying reason – it all boils down to every researcher’s concern: ‘Am I superfluous…?’

Putting ChatGPT to the jewellery test: an academic question

So, I started out big. I fearlessly asked it about the topic of my PhD-research: Egyptian zar-jewellery. That’s a major test of my steely nerves: what if a superbrain with access to everything published online smashes my thesis in seconds? I gave it a rather general prompt: ‘Can you tell me about Egyptian zar-jewellery in 100 words?’

It came back with this:

Egyptian zar jewelry is integral to the zar ritual, a traditional healing and spiritual practice. In this ceremony, participants seek to connect with spirits for various afflictions. The vibrant and intricate zar jewelry, made with silver, beads, and semi-precious stones, is worn during these rituals. Beyond its ritualistic role, the adornments have gained global recognition for their artistic and cultural value. Collectors appreciate the unique aesthetics, highlighting the enduring influence of Egyptian zar traditions on contemporary art and design.

Well, ok. That looks like a coherent answer. Looks like, but isn’t.

It starts off with actual zar, but them quickly turns into a rather general description. Especially in the second part, you could just leave out ‘zar’ and the text would be applicable to any and all jewellery. Also notice the abundance of adjectives: vibrant, intricate, global, unique, enduring…

One thing is clear: ChatpGPT, bless its bytes, has no idea what zar jewellery is. But it has been asked to produce 100 words on the topic, so it does. This is called hallucinating: if it does not find matching info online, it starts presenting text that looks good, but has no direct bearing on the topic (or may even be completely and utterly off the mark).

Putting ChatGPT to the jewellery test: headlines and titles

Content creators ask ChatGPT not necessarily to write their entire content, but use it for inspiration, too. And one thing for which inspiration comes in really handy, is creating titles. Had to try, of course! Here’s how that went.

Me: ‘I wrote a blog with tips on how to clean ethnic jewellery from the Middle East. Can you give me 5 engaging titles that will make my audience want to read the blog? Use maximum 10 words per title.’

ChatGPT:

“Unlock the Secrets: Cleaning Middle Eastern Treasures at Home!”
“Shine On: Revive Your Ethnic Jewelry’s Radiance with Easy Tips!”
“Timeless Brilliance: Discover Proven Hacks to Clean Middle East Jewelry!”
“Preserve History: How to Care for Your Exquisite Middle Eastern Gems!”
“Sparkling Stories: Unveil the Magic of Cleaning Middle East Jewelry!”

I don’t know about you, but these are not titles I’d dare to serve you. They totally make me cringe. (if you think otherwise, I’d love to hear that, by the way!) It’s too much. All those exclamation marks, the cheesy wordplay, the secrets, the unveiling….It’s just not me.

The blog post in question, boringly called ‘How to clean ethnic silver’ until I come up with something else, is here. In case you simply must read it after seeing these captivating headlines.

ChatGPT: the importance of phrasing

Maybe my choice of words was not the best. So, I asked it for a blog post idea on vintage jewellery of North Africa and Southwest Asia (so no ethnic, no Middle East). It came back with ‘Hidden Gems: Unearthing Rare Vintage Jewelry Finds in Souks and Bazaars’.

Hm. Again, on the sensationalist side with a dash of Orientalism.

Out of curiosity (did I mention ChatGPT is quite fascinating, and it may even get a little addictive?) I asked it for an outline of this blog idea: what would it suggest I’d be writing about?

Here, I was positively surprised. Yes, it did come up with Orientalist content again, such as ‘an overview of the enchanting souks and bazaars’, followed by ‘the fascination of souk and bazaar shopping’ and ‘stories of hidden treasures’.

But the next building block was ‘promoting ethical sourcing and fair trade practices’ and ‘encouraging collectors to contribute to the documentation of cultural stories behind each piece’.

High five to the screen! Have you been listening to me, ChatGPT?? Are you hearing me? Because if you have been following this blog for a while, you know that the future of jewellery concerns me just as much as its past, and it’s nice to see that acknowledged. Even if it’s by a superchatbot.

ChatGPT on jewellery content suggestions

Encouraged, I asked it to come up with more blog post ideas or content suggestions. Let’s see what ChatGPT feels I should be serving you next!

Me: ‘Can you give me 5 blog post ideas that collectors of ethnic jewellery from the Middle East will find interesting?’

ChatGPT:

The Allure of Middle Eastern Jewelry – Uh, what does that even mean?
Unveiling the Symbolism: Meanings Behind Middle Eastern Jewelry Designs – Got that. It’s all here.
The Essence of Identity: Unveiling the Significance of Ethnic Jewelry – Also got that. It’s all here. And a bit here.
Beyond the Veil: Craftsmanship and Cultural Heritage – What should this be? On silversmithing and craftsmanship, I think?
Collector’s Corner: Tips for Building a Middle Eastern Jewelry Collection – Great, got that, too. It’s literally presented here.

So, three of the five ideas are already present on this very blog. The other two are a bit vague in their description.

That is because these suggestions are super general: again, replace ‘Middle Eastern Jewelry’ by ‘English Mourning Jewellery’, ‘Scandinavian Woodcarving’ or ‘Wedding Cake’ and the post ideas would still be grammatically correct. Anyone with knowledge of woodcarving or wedding cakes could probably come up with content for these suggestions.

But, a bigger issue jumps from these lines. In three of the five suggestions, it comes up with veiling and unveiling. The 4^th suggestion does not even mention jewellery, but associates ‘Middle East’ with ‘veil’. And that brings me to some considerations about content produced using ChatGPT.

ChatGPT reflects our world

As I said above, ChatGPT is an AI which uses online resources. It does not create new content: it reshuffles existing information. It literally parrots our world back to us. And it does so in grammatically correct, good-looking lines. The text it produces looks convincing, but upon closer inspection is often quite general. That is smart for sure, but I would not call it intelligent.

It also repeats existing prejudices. Ask a question about the Middle East? You get Orientalist results, with veiling and secrets and fascinating bazaars and more. Apparently, this is what is out there when it comes to information on jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia.

Now the thing is that in recent years, awareness of our choice of words has increased. And where many human authors actively try to stay away from lines that are exoticizing or framing, ChatGPT does the opposite. It is lagging behind: it bases itself on data up until 2021, and as such will always reflect a world view of a couple of years ago.

And the more it is used to produce content, the longer that world view will linger. Combined with good looking, but essentially hollow phrasing, ChatGPT spins our view on jewellery right back into Orientalist mysteries.

Using ChatGPT for jewellery research: are we superfluous?

So, can we use ChatGPT for research into jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia? Am I superfluous? As a marketeer, maybe – those headlines are something else.

But as a researcher, I feel our work may be needed even more. ChatGPT is absolutely a very useful tool, but it is just that: a tool. I find it to be helpful in suggesting topics or angles, but it misses a crucial point.

Studying jewellery takes not just gathering and presenting a bunch of facts, but interpreting them. And that interpretation, in turn, definitely needs a human touch. It needs awareness, dialogue and cultural sensitivity. It needs transparency, acknowledging viewpoints of others, and correcting mistakes.

Research is not interpreting in isolation, but listening, learning and sharing together.

So for the foreseeable future, I’ll be typing away oldschool. But keeping an eye on AI developments, because who knows what the future may still bring…!

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Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. Her main field of expertise is jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, as well as archaeological and archaeological revival jewellery. She has authored several books on jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Turquoise Mountain Jordan, and many others. She provides consultancy and research on jewellery collections for both museums and private collections, teaches courses and curates exhibitions. She is not involved in the business of buying and selling jewellery, and focuses on research, knowledge production, and education only.

100 jewellery blogs

by dr. Sigrid van Roode | Opinion

Jewellery blogging

100 jewellery blogs

Published Dec 29, 2023

This piece is the 100^th blog on jewellery! Would you believe it? Time truly flies. A lot can happen in 100 blog articles, and so I wanted to share more of personal perspective on the things I learned during these 100 blogs on jewellery from the Middle East and North Africa. Settle in for the good, the bad and the amazing of blogging on traditional jewellery!

Collecting silver jewellery from the Middle East and North Africa

But first, a little on how I got into this! I started collecting jewellery back in 1995. At that time, I was a student of Egyptology, and I loved hanging out in Cairo’s Khan el-Khalili to look for old jewellery. It still feels like yesterday, even though it’s almost 30 years ago.

Now in those days, the Internet was not what it was today. Social media were not invented yet (I know! Shocker!), having a personal email address was new, and any information still traveled slowly. These were the days that a computer was a big plastic box that could handle all of 250 MB, most households still had one telephone in a fixed place, and when I went to Egypt to work on an excavation, chances were my family would receive my letters only after I had returned.

That went both ways: the most exciting part of working on an excavation was heading out to Cairo once a week, and check if letters from friends and family had been delivered.

So that tells you two things: yes, I am that old, and there was very little reliable info on jewellery around when I just started out. The excitement when a new book appeared on jewellery was just as intense as that feeling of joy when a handwritten letter had found its way to me in Cairo – wow! Something new to read!

A silver amulet container from Egypt, placed on handwritten Arabic magic squares

Blogging on traditional jewellery from North Africa and the Middle East

How different things are today – there is so much out there on all things jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia! At just a click of a mouse or a tap of the finger, there is a world of images and info available that I only could have dreamed of all those years ago. To me, it is absolutely fantastic to browse Pinterest-boards and chat with people from all over the world through social media who share that passion for traditional jewellery.

But…that is also where the flip side is, I think: in the lightning speed with which information travels the Internet and our ever-shortening attention span. When I do online research, I come across the same tidbits of info repeated again and again. Absolutely, there is so much interesting stuff out there! That also includes tons of content that is copied and shared over and over again, but not necessarily always true or even reliable. More, yes, but not always better.

Jewellery blogging: all the good

That is partly why I decided to start a blog. The other reason, of course, is that I just love talking about jewellery! And, as it happens, I also really, really love to write.

By starting my own blog, I could write about everything I find fascinating or beautiful about traditional jewellery – and that is a lot. A hundred posts on jewellery from the Middle East and North Africa, and it feels like I’m just getting started!

The absolute amazing part of blogging is the number of people I have ‘met’ through blog posts or social media posts. I could never have dreamed of the community I found simply by writing about jewellery, and starting a blog honestly is one of the best decisions I ever made.

Nerding out in the notes: jewellery blogging with transparency

Blogging provides me with the opportunity to add solid information to the digital world. And one of the things I learned in the past 100 jewellery blogs is that I prefer to include references. At the end of most of my blog articles, you will find the exact place where I got specific information from. If it’s available online, I include a link to it. If someone told me, I am clear about that, too.

I want to be as transparent as possible on where I get my information from. Providing clear references helps all of us with our own research. That’s why referencing is standard practice in published articles, and I don’t see why I should not apply the same to blog posts. You can always skip them, they’re at the bottom end for a reason!

Detail of coins and beads on a bright red Palestinian headdress

Blogging on jewellery collection management

There is a segment to jewellery collecting that does not get all that much attention online: how to actually manage a collection of traditional jewellery from the Middle East and North Africa? There are practical aspects to consider like cleaning silver, storing and documenting, but what to do with your jewellery collection later in life? Sell it, donate it…and how to go about that?

And then there are the ethical and legal aspects to consider. What about coral beads, ivory bangles, excavated beads, archaeological jewellery…can these just be bought and sold? And what is this whole provenance-discussion about, specifically for collectors of traditional jewellery from the Middle East and Southwest Asia?

I decided to blog about those practical things, too, and over the past 100 blogs I learned that these tips for jewellery collectors are among the articles that you refer back to most often. I’m really glad to be of help in this way!

Sigrid van Roode, wearing a summer dress, reading books on Tuareg jewellery

Blogging about jewellery books

Even though the digital world is amazing, I adore books. There are a lot more of those since I first started out, too, and one of things I love doing the most is reviewing the latest books on jewellery and related fields for you. Opening that package straight from the publisher still brings the same level of excitement as 30 years ago! I guess I’m one of the biggest book nerds you’ll ever meet.

Over the past 100 jewellery book blogs, I learned that you like these posts: they are appreciated by people who are on the fence on whether or not to buy a particular jewellery book, and by people looking for titles they might enjoy.

Here as well, I found that being transparent adds to the value of the blog: I’ll always mention whether I received a book as an advanced reading copy, or if I purchased it myself, whether it was gifted by the author, or any other way a book may have found its way to me.

The tarnish on jewellery blogging: copyright things

Blogging sounds simple, but it is not the marshmallow-hued world of sipping latte’s in fashionable coffeerooms that the Internet would have you think of: a lot of work goes into these articles. Especially if you’d like your photos to look nice and your texts to be referenced. Writing blog posts just takes serious time.

And then suddenly, there is that first realization that someone has copied your work, copyright policy nothwithstanding. That is a reality I learned in 100 blog posts, too.

Here are some examples of things that actually happened. Please forgive me if the following sounds blunt! But I promised you the bad, too, so here we go.

I’ve had some of my photos decapitated to cut off the ‘Bedouin Silver’-text (granted, the text was at the bottom of the image, so it’s more like defooted) – and in doing so, part of the object on the photo was removed, too. It’s beyond me how anyone could want to pass off a photo as their own so badly they would purposefully damage the image itself, too.

I’ve had people copy my social media posts and present it as their own. It happens a lot with the texts I wrote with those posts: these I regularly find literally copy-pasted into online sellers’ descriptions; without acknowledging that it was not them who researched and wrote those lines.

A special shout-out at this point to jewellery dealers with online galleries of traditional jewellery: I know your images are getting snatched, too, and presented in shady online shops as if they were for sale. I feel you!

But: it gets even crazier. I’ve seen people give talks in which their presentation sheets were made of my photos and texts, but without a single credit line. That has happened to other researchers I know, too, one of which actually attended a talk made largely with her material. It made for a super awkward Q&A.

To be completely honest with you, it still hurts each and every time I see my work copied and shared without proper credit. I can’t think of another label to put on that feeling. I don’t mind the sharing itself (on the contrary, I’d say!) but please do me the courtesy of acknowledging my time and effort.

Well, that was it for the bad! After writing 100 posts though, I can confidently say that the good outweighs everything else. So…

…another 100 jewellery blogs coming up!

All of the appreciation, friendship and community (as well as the occasional copyright infringements) I get, signal one thing: apparently, this type of jewellery blog is just the thing people are looking for.

I honestly love receiving your feedback, the friendships that have formed over the years and the lively jewellery discussions I have had. I’ll be blogging away on this end, and I’m excited to continue contributing to the jewellery community of collectors, researchers and scholars.

Another 100 jewellery blogs…? Coming right up!

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