A Japanese writer, 33-year-old Rie Kudan, recently won one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the country for her novel Tokyo Sympathy Tower and admitted afterward that she had employed ChatGPT to write a portion of the text. And she wasn’t ashamed to admit it, instead advocating the use of Generative AI as a creative collaborator. She wants to “work with” generative AI to make the best use of her creativity, according to CyberNet.

Meanwhile, authors in the United States are waging war against AI for copyright violation and intellectual property theft. Writers including Jonathan Franzen, Salman Rushdie, and George R.R. Martin are sounding the alarm against the unlawful intrusion of AI in the creative writing world. It is ironic, then, that an author across the Pacific shows no qualms with employing a computerized ghostwriter to write some of her novel, which contest judges called “practically flawless.”

The immediate question is whether Kudan should have received the reward at all. She purportedly used ChatGPT to write 5% of the novel, which is relatively small. However, the work is not completely original. Other authors who use their own imaginative resources without the help of a soulless computer may be rightly perturbed by Kudan’s victory.

However, Japan’s culture seems much more comfortable with ingratiating the robotic into various spheres of life. The technologically advanced nation has long been regarded as one of the leaders in robotics. Brian Lufkin writes for BBC,

In Tokyo’s Silver Wing nursing home, about two dozen seniors are sitting in the common area as pudding cups are distributed. In the middle of the room is a staff member and a humanoid robot named Pepper, who is leading the room in group games and exercises.

-Brian Lufkin, What the world can learn from Japan’s robots (bbc.com)

Japan’s population is aging and in general decline. Humanoid robots might be called upon to “pick up the slack,” so to speak. Robotic priests are also making appearances in Japan. However, there are severe limits to humanizing the robotic in this manner, and it traces back to the topic of using ChatGPT for novel-writing. Namely, AI can never be credible because it cannot understand what it generates. While stylistically, the prose AI “created” for Karan’s novel might be “flawless,” it lacks credibility because it lacks the human voice. That’s not to say that Karan is not a creative novelist; she very well appears to be, and her use of ChatGPT in her project seems to be more experimental than from a lack of originality. But writing is about telling a story about the complexity of being human. Can non-humans contribute to the task?

Joshua Conrad Jackson & Kai Chi Yam write helpfully in the Scientific American,

Robots can preach sermons and write political speeches, but they do not authentically understand the beliefs they convey. Nor can robots truly engage in costly behavior such as celibacy because they do not feel the cost.

-Joshua Conrad Jackson & Kai Chi Yam, The In-Credible Robot Priest and the Limits of Robot Workers | Scientific American

There is much more to be explored here; supposing a novel is about robots, like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, should a robotic “voice” be used to write part of it? What makes Ishiguro’s narrator, a robot, so compelling though, is her apparent sentience and compassion. In short, we can only relate to her insofar as we suspend our belief and regard her as a human. The great tragedy in that story is coming to terms with the fact that she is not.