A Chinese professor used AI to write a science fiction novel. Then it was a winner in a national competition

Journalism professor Shen Yang plans to detail his creation process so anyone can ‘create good fiction with AI’

But artificial intelligence poses threats to writers and irreversible damage to literary language, a publisher says

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Experts say it was not easy to recognise that a science fiction novel submitted to a national literary competition had been generated by an AI platform. The illustrations were also created by AI. Photo: Weibo/Capital Television

Published: 5:00pm, 20 Dec 2023Updated: 9:49pm, 20 Dec 2023

When a professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University set out to write a science fiction novel about the metaverse and humanoid robots, he turned to artificial intelligence for inspiration.

The AI ended up generating his entire book – which then took out a national science fiction award honour.

The nearly 6,000-character Chinese-language novel Land of Memories, by Shen Yang, a professor at the university’s school of journalism and communication, was among the winners of the Jiangsu Youth Popular Science Science Fiction Competition, Jinan Times, a newspaper in Shandong province reported.

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Shen crafted the sci-fi narrative from a draft of 43,000 characters generated in just three hours with 66 prompts. The unique storyline set the scene with the first three lines, all generated by AI:

“In the metaverse’s edge, lies the ‘Land of Memories’, a forbidden realm where humans are barred. Solid illusions crafted by amnesiac humanoid robots and AI that had lost memories populate its domain.

“Any intruder, be it human or artificial, will have their memories drained away, forever trapped within its forbidden embrace.”

The story centres on a metaverse explorer named Li Xiao, who used to be a neural engineer in the real world.

A Chinese professor used AI to write a science fiction novel. Then it was a winner in a national competition

Journalism professor Shen Yang plans to detail his creation process so anyone can ‘create good fiction with AI’ But artificial intelligence poses threats to writers and irreversible damage to literary language, a publisher says

Journalism professor Shen Yang plans to detail his creation process so anyone can ‘create good fiction with AI’

But artificial intelligence poses threats to writers and irreversible damage to literary language, a publisher says