AI version of the book | Expert opinion

The estates of Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming have approved “sequel novels” by new authors to preserve the value of the literary series. Naturally, the question arises: “Why not apply AI?” Nevertheless, AI is engaged in a growing number of artistic endeavours. It is now possible to digitally resurrect deceased actors to complete unfinished films. In 2019, Huawei used AI to generate the melodies for the third and fourth movements of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. Beethoven's 10th Symphony, which had been left unfinished, was completed in 2021 thanks to AI.

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Similarly, much classic literature remains unfinished due to the death of the writer. Many agree that Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is not yet finished. Many writers have attempted to complete Charles Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood. A version purportedly 'ghost-written' by Dickens was also produced, channeling the spirit of Dickens. In 1990, renowned Dumas scholar Claude Schopf rediscovered Dumas's unfinished last book, The Last Knight, by Alexandre his.
Over the next 12 years or so, Schopf used published works, drafts, and letters to piece together the events, and the book was published in 2005. It might be thrilling to find out what happens to Charlotte Heywood in Jane Austen's Sanditon, or what happens to Cecilia Brady. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon deals with her grief. Additionally, there is a whole genre of other unfinished novels, such as Hemingway's The Garden of Eden, Kafka's America, and Terry Pratchett's The Shepherd's Crown. If you delve into ancient Greek and Roman literature, you may even want to finish reading Virgil's Aeneid, Euripides' Iphigenia of Aulis, and Plautus' Amphitruo. However, no one knows how the original author completed this work. But AI could add new dimensions to them.

Additionally, some AI models may generate different representations of incomplete books.

Since the GPT-3 Twitter story, AI has improved significantly. For GenAI to fully emulate a particular author's writing style, all it needs to do is include a large portion of that author's writing in the training data. Simple. Should an unfinished book published as an “AI version” therefore be considered a “ghostwriter” in a sense? On the other hand, the most appealing aspect of an unfinished work is that it allows the reader to read the work without an author. Being able to speculate freely and feel responsible. Therefore, a partially completed book promises revelation.

So why would you want to use AI to complete your unfinished novel? Joy is one obvious reaction. Of course, there is also a business motive. Philosophical questions and literary conundrums about morality still exist. Still, Japanese novelist Rie Kudan recently won the Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan's most coveted literary honors, while her book Tokyo Dojojima, about 5 Percent admitted that it was generated verbatim by her ChatGPT. What is important is that the selection committee determines that there is no problem with Kudan's use of AI. So the question is, how can we balance it with reality?

And morality? However, evaluating such “half-human, half-AI works” in terms of originality, intellectual property rights, ethics, and most importantly, the rights of the deceased is never easy. In many parts of the world, even the laws are unclear.

The author is a professor of statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.