An AI-Written Novella Almost Won a Literary Prize

In the future, artificial intelligence may not just be relegated to the role of personal assistant or data analyzer: it may also make art. A novella co-written by an AI program and its human assistants made it through the first round of selection for a Japanese literary prize.
 The novella, whose title translates to "The Day a Computer Writes a Novel," was one of 11 AI-authored submissions to the third-annual Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award.
The award is known for accepting writing from both humans and machines, but this was the first time it has received submissions from AI programs, Emiko Jozuka reports.