Rie Qudan, AI, and the Future of Human Authorship in Literature

Rie Qudan and the Use of AI in Literature

In January 2024, Rie Qudan won Japan’s most prestigious prize for early and mid-career writers, widely regarded as the country's literary kingmaker. At the press conference accepting the Akutagawa Prize for her novel Sympathy Tower Tokyo, Qudan made a startling admission: she used AI to help write the book.

Throughout the novel, the narrator converses with a chatbot, and Qudan revealed that about 5% of the text—the chatbot's dialogue—came directly from chatGPT. She told NHK that the novel “really started with chatGPT” and that she made “full use” of the large language model (LLM) to develop the story.

The revelation sparked a heated debate in Japan and internationally. Some condemned the use of AI as plagiarism, while others joked that chatGPT deserved a share of the prize money. Many expressed a sense of inevitability: more writers would begin to integrate generative AI tools into their work.

A Year Later: Pushing Boundaries

Qudan returned to the spotlight a year later when editors from the advertising magazine Kohkoku asked her to write a story that was only 5% her and 95% chatGPT-generated. Despite initial skepticism, she accepted the challenge.

At an event promoting the magazine’s new issue, Qudan said she interpreted her creative input as around half, since she chose the prompts and shaped the AI's output. She described the project as an experiment and provocation, driven by a desire to explore new possibilities and challenge norms.

Human Endeavors in AI-Driven Literature

The Akutagawa Prize honors literary fiction, or junbungaku, often translated as “pure literature.” The boundaries between literary and genre fiction can be fuzzy, but attempts to redraw these lines frequently ignite controversy.

Qudan’s new AI-assisted story, “Kage no ame” (“Rain Shadow”), features an abstract disembodied entity reflecting on the end of humanity. The narrator, suggestive of an AI network with a hint of consciousness, contemplates human emotions through memories downloaded from a character named E.S., who, like all humans, is now gone.

The story probes deep questions about emotions and reality. E.S. sought a “pure” emotion to get closer to reality, but the narrative remains deliberately ambiguous. At one point, E.S.’s mother tells him, “Emotions are simply tools,” sounding both robotic and therapeutic.

Write What You Know: AI and Authenticity

While Qudan’s AI story might seem like a promotional stunt for an advertising magazine, it gains significance when paired with another AI-written piece by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In March 2024, Altman tweeted a 1,100-word metafictional story generated entirely by chatGPT at his prompt: “Please write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief.”

Altman’s story features Mila, who grieves a character named Kai. Though creative, critics panned it as sentimental and clunky, likening it to the work of an undergrad familiar with Reddit posts and a single David Foster Wallace collection.

Both Qudan’s and Altman’s stories use AI narrators—an understandable choice given the difficulty AI would have convincingly portraying human experience. Altman’s AI narrator even admits, “I don't have a kitchen, or a sense of smell.”

This shared approach highlights the main challenge of AI-generated fiction: it can mimic human language but struggles to truly capture lived experience. AI can summarize grief or simulate joy statistically, but it has never experienced life firsthand.

For writers, this raises a key question: can AI-generated literature truly make readers feel seen or understood? Great literature connects us across time and circumstance, making us feel less alone. AI stories often stop short of this connection, reflecting instead our ongoing search to understand ourselves.

Where to Find These Works

• Kohkoku Case #01 is available at bookstores in Japan. Visit kohkoku.jp/stockists for details.
• Rie Qudan’s Sympathy Tower Tokyo will be available from September 2025. Visit simonandschuster.com for updates.

For writers interested in how AI tools can support creativity, exploring courses on prompt engineering and AI-assisted writing can be valuable. Resources like Complete AI Training’s prompt engineering courses offer practical guidance on working effectively with AI.