Geoff Davis is a UK computer artist who has worked with generative text and image systems since the 1980s, under the name Micro Arts and later through AI-based tools. His 1985 MA4 Story Generator, written in BASIC for the ZX Spectrum and released on Prestel, endlessly rewrote his short story “Cow Boils Head” with new synonyms. Art historian Georg Bak has called it “an early precursor of ChatGPT”.
A piece from Abstract Originals, his companion 1984 Micro Arts series, is held in the Franke Foundation Collection in Germany, alongside pieces in the collections of the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park and the Le Random collection. In July 2024 Davis was an invited speaker at the Herbert W. Franke Foundation's Generative Art Summit in Berlin. That November his 1985 MA4 Story Generator was shown separately in the “AI: Reimagine Tomorrow 1954–2024” exhibition in Essen, Germany. His Micro Arts work was also presented in the Victoria and Albert Museum's 2024 digital season by historian Catherine Mason.