AI-Generated Novel Wins AlphaPolis’ 18th Fantasy Award and Has Publication Cancelled
It was discovered that a person used AI to write a novel and, as a result, won the 18th AlphaPolis Fantasy Award. AlphaPolis is a Japanese publisher, and it is worth noting that the company acquired animation studio White Fox.
The web novel tells the story of a 28-year-old woman who works in an office and is heavily exploited at her job. She ends up spending nights without sleep and working on weekends, and the excessive workload ultimately leads to her death.
She then awakens having reincarnated into a fantasy world as a 16-year-old girl, the daughter of a noble family, and is granted a powerful ability.
From there, she spends her days reforming an entire country while receiving excessive affection from the commander of the knights and the emperor. Below is the character visual, which was also created using AI.
Winning this award grants not only prize money and recognition, but also the opportunity for a physical publication. However, this was canceled after it was discovered that the novel had been written using AI, which sparked various reactions.
Check out some of them:
“Yikes… generative AI is complicated because of copyright issues. Will contests eventually require identity verification? 🤔”
“What’s really concerning is that AI has finally reached a level where it can win awards. It still raises the question of how much AI was actually used. Personally, if it was just for proofreading or corrections, that might not be a problem…”
“Honestly, I think AlphaPolis should be the one publishing tons of AI-generated works.”
“Adding rules afterward and nullifying everything is just awful…”
“Even if it were published as a book, it feels like the author wouldn’t even fully understand the story’s content… since it’s AI, you know…”
“I’ve won an award at AlphaPolis myself, so this leaves me with very mixed feelings…”
“I’ve always thought the biggest issue with AI use in novels is that once edited, there’s no way for outsiders to tell. How did this get discovered? Did the author just come clean…?”
First, an AI-generated manga reached first place in the rankings of Japan’s largest e-book store. Now an AI has won a novel contest. What’s next?