“This is my story, my characters, my world. I invented it. What if a computer wrote it?”
The breakthrough in artificial intelligence technology has started to affect the world of literature.
An author who periodically publishes fantasy novels for young readers on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing e-book platform has turned to an AI-based language program to keep up with her work.
Jennifer Lepp, who goes by the pseudonym Leanne Leeds, finished 80 percent of the last novel in her series about a witch detective in mid-March and realized she had fallen far behind schedule.
In the highly competitive world of e-book publishing, it is crucial to provide readers with a steady supply of text, so Leeds began to look for other solutions.
That’s when the author was introduced to Sudowrite, an artificial intelligence program built on the GPT-3 language model from artificial intelligence firm Open AI.
Developed by two researchers, Amit Gupta and James Yu, users upload their writing to an interface. The program then starts rewriting the text by selecting various words or makes suggestions for the continuation of the plot.
After some tinkering, Lepp figured out how to navigate the program and likened the process to prophecy. Although he had to edit and revise the resulting text, he found that his workload was significantly reduced.
Speaking to The Verge, Lepp said, “This is my story, my characters, my world. I found it,” Lepp told The Verge:
But what if a computer wrote it?
Orna Ross, founder of the UK-based Independent Authors Guild, has expressed her support for writers like Lepp who utilize artificial intelligence.
“Using an agent is like having a writing partner,” Ross said:
A crazy partner who comes up with all kinds of suggestions, who never gets tired, who is always there. And in this relationship that I have, I am absolutely in charge.
Joanna Penn, an independent novelist and one of the biggest proponents of artificial intelligence, told her students on the first day of her workshop:
You’re already an AI-powered writer. Don’t you use Amazon for shopping, don’t you use Google for research?
