The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2023–2024
Google and Lupe Fiasco build TextFX, AI wordplay tools — Webby Award 2024
Google asks rapper Lupe Fiasco what AI should do for writers — he builds ten small wordplay tools that expand the writing process instead of replacing it.
What it had to solve
In 2023 generative AI was mostly sold as a shortcut that writes your lyrics, copy or code for you. Google Lab Sessions wanted to demonstrate the opposite: AI that amplifies human creativity, co-designed with a visionary from outside technology.
How it works
In August 2023 Google released TextFX, a free suite of ten AI writing tools built with rapper Lupe Fiasco. Powered by PaLM 2, it lets users type a word, phrase or scene and receive creative possibilities: Simile builds comparisons, Explode breaks a word into similar-sounding phrases, Chain links related ideas, POV tries different perspectives, and the rest work the same raw material.
The crucial decision was what the AI was not allowed to do. Fiasco did not want a machine writing his lyrics; he wanted instruments that expanded the universe of possibilities around any word or concept. So TextFX never produces finished lines — it feeds the writer's process, and every tool ships with an example performed by Fiasco himself.
The experiment came from Google Lab Sessions, which pairs 'visionaries from all realms of human endeavor' with the company's latest AI. TextFX won a 2024 Webby Award for Arts, Culture & Events (AI, Metaverse & Virtual) and stayed online as a free tool — an early, artist-led answer to the fear that generative AI would replace writers.
Why it lands
- It inverted the default: instead of asking what AI can automate, Google asked a master of the craft what would help him, then built that.
- It respected the artist's process: Fiasco's refusal to let AI write verses shaped a tool that expands language rather than replacing the writer.
- It made the technology approachable: ten named, single-purpose tools are easier to grasp and remix than one generic chatbot.
- Co-creation lent the launch credibility with the exact skeptics — rappers, poets and copywriters — who most feared AI.
What it did
TextFX launched as a free experiment and won the 2024 Webby Award for Arts, Culture & Events (AI Apps and Experiences). It became a widely cited proof that creative AI could extend a writer's process rather than replace it.
What you can take
Don't ask what AI can automate for creators — ask creators what they want AI to do. A tool that extends a master's process teaches the craft to everyone else too.
Since then
TextFX remained online as a free Google experiment, and the artist-first design became a reference point for later creative-AI collaborations. Fiasco kept teaching, and the tool's Webby win cemented it as an early model of AI built with creators rather than for them.
Sources
- 28th Annual Webby Award Winners Announced
- Try out Google 'TextFX' and its 10 creative AI tools for rappers, writers
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