Winner of Japan's Top Literary Prize Admits She Used ChatGPT 195

Rie Kudan, 33, Japan's top literary prize winner, revealed on Wednesday that she used ChatGPT to write part of her book.

Reportedly, judges described Rie Kudan's novel as "nearly flawless." Her science fiction novel "Tokyo-to Dojo-to / Tokyo Sympathy Tower" tells the story of a towering prison tower, with themes revolving around artificial intelligence.

The Akutagawa Prize is the top award in the field of pure literature in Japan, awarded semi-annually to emerging writers. Winners typically receive a great deal of media attention.

In her acceptance speech, Kudan revealed that part of the book was written by ChatGPT. According to the Japan Times, Kudan said: "This is a novel that makes full use of generative AI such as ChatGPT, and perhaps about 5% of the entire text is written verbatim from generative AI." "I want to work well with them to express my creativity."

The Japan Times reported on Friday that reactions on social media were swift and harsh, with many commenters expressing concerns about what the future of literature would look like if artificial intelligence were allowed to compete for the top prizes.

The use of generative AI in creative fields remains highly controversial, partly because such systems are trained on a massive amount of works by other authors. It is well known that AI systems regurgitate the texts on which they have been heavily trained, including personal information of real people scraped from the internet.