This Japanese AI wrote a novel and almost won a literary prize

A novel written by artificial intelligence was in the running for the Japanese prize, Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award.

The novel was co-written by Hishoshi Matsubara, professor of computer science and his team at Future University in Japan. The team submitted their novel to Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award, which accepts submissions from humans and machines. The award is named after a science fiction author.

According to the LA Times, the AI wrote four books of which one made it past the first round of the prize. The novel, titled The Day a Computer Writes a Novel (Konpyuta ga shosetsu wo kaku hi), was one among the 1450 submission received for the prize. 11 of the submission received were written with the help of AI programmes.

Science fiction novelist Satoshi Hase said he was impressed by the book and praised its structure.

Asahi Shimbun reports that Professor's team did the research for the novel and worked with AI to write it. While 80% of the work had human involvement, the novel's text was written entirely by the AI. It used words and phrases from a sample novel to construct a new novel similar to it.

Matsubara told Yomiuri Shimbun,“In the future, I’d like to expand AI’s potential (so it's similar to) human creativity.”