(Tokyo) Rie Kudan, winner of Japan’s most prestigious literary prize, explained that around 5% of her futuristic novel was written by the generative artificial intelligence software ChatGPT, believing that it had helped her free her creative potential.
The author’s latest novel, Tokyo-to Dojo-towhose title can be translated as Tokyo Compassion Towerreceived the Akutagawa Prize on Wednesday, with the jury declaring that it was “so perfect that it is difficult to find fault in it”.
But Rie Kudan, 33, revealed during a ceremony that he had “employed the full potential of AI to write this book”, explaining that “about 5% of the book is made up of sentences generated by AI” cited word for word.
The AI tool launched in 2022, which can write texts on demand in seconds, is causing growing concern in various sectors, including publishing.
AI is a recurring subject in Kudan’s book set in a futuristic Tokyo, which is themed around a prison tower designed by an architect uncomfortable in an overly tolerant society.
Mme Kudan said she frequently converses with the AI, confiding her most intimate thoughts, which she “can’t talk to anyone else about,” adding that ChatGPT’s responses sometimes inspired dialogue in the novel.
She said she wanted to maintain “good relations” with AI and “unleash (its) creativity”.
Contacted by AFP, the Akutagawa Prize organization did not wish to comment on these statements.
Opinions were divided on social networks, where some judged M’s approachme Kudan morally questionable.
“So she wrote a book using AI skillfully…Is that talent? I don’t know,” wrote one user on X.
Others praised the ingenuity of the novelist and the efforts made during her dialogues with the AI to derive texts.
Books listing ChatGPT as a co-author have been made available for sale through Amazon’s e-book self-publishing service, but are generally rated as poor quality.
British author Salman Rushdie estimated at the end of 2023 that a short text generated in his style by artificial intelligence was simply “to be thrown away”.
Numerous legal actions have also been launched by authors such as George RR Martin (Game Of Thrones) against the Californian start-up company OpenAI, behind ChatGPT, which they accuse of violating their copyrights.