Machine tooled
Sympathy Tower Tokyo
Rie Qudan
(Penguin, £10.99)
THE publishing industry is in turmoil over AI. Unsure whether to fight it as authors demand or embrace it as the government urges, most have gone for milquetoast gestures.
Faber has published Sarah Hall’s new novel with a mimsy “HUMAN WRITTEN” emblem on the front. Penguin has taken to adding a copyright warning which effectively says: “Pls don’t use this ickle book for yr AI training Mr Altman, kthxbai.”
Meanwhile the Japanese, early adopters of technology, are just getting on with it. Thirtysomething author Rie Qudan made headlines even in the UK when her novel Sympathy Tower Tokyo won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize for young authors in 2023, despite admitting that it had been partly written using ChatGPT.