Privately Automating Common, Uncommon, and Surprising Markup Tasks using AI Large Language Models

Abstract

Generative AI is everywhere, from DALL-E for image generation to ChatGPT for language tasks. The power of these models boggles the mind even for people who’ve been involved in AI for ages. Can they help us? It’s been widely reported that they can be used to write rather sophisticated code in languages like Python and Javascript — but how well do they work with markup? Can they work with XML properly, or can they only treat it as tag soup? Even without any specialized XML training, large language models (LLMs) prove to have some very interesting, and in some cases impressive, capabilities. By using self-hosted LLMs rather than third-party services such as ChatGPT or Bard, we can exploit those capabilities even for private applications. There are certainly some clear limitations, but LLMs can also handle a surprising number of common markup tasks out of the box.