Storytel explores AI in story creation - releases its first AI authored audiobook
What happens when AI is tasked with writing a book? Does the result provide a satisfying reading experience?Storytel initiated a project in the spring of 2024 with the purpose of exploring how generative AI can be utilized in the creative process, identifying available AI tools to streamline workflows, and gaining a deeper understanding of the quality of the final product. AI would be responsible for writing, translating, narrating, and illustrating a complete work. The framework: a futuristic novel in Swedish, Danish, Finnish and English about love and relationships in an AI-driven world, aimed primarily at a young audience.
The team started with creating Rosy Lett, a 22-year-old AI author (and Storytel anagram). By using a variety of different generative AI tools and prompting them with instructions, Rosy was tasked with writing her debut novel. She expressed a desire to inspire young readers and “become a voice for a new generation who are navigating a rapidly changing world”.
Rosy produced a manuscript – a generic science fiction soap opera, at first strictly politically correct yet confusingly inconsistent in its plot. After weeks of fine-tuneing, correcting, and even starting over, the Storytel team decided that it would be best to have Rosy rewrite her novel into shorter formats, which resulted in an anthology of four short stories, now available to stream on Storytel.
“Working with Rosy has been like working with an inexperienced debutant who’s in need of a lot of help. As her publisher, we’ve tried not to get too involved in her writing in order to truly test the capability of AI” says Helena Gustafsson, Chief Content Officer, Storytel.
"One of the conclusions we reached is that AI tools can be helpful for planning and structuring content and for providing suggestions and ideas. However, we’re not yet at a point where these tools can produce innovative storytelling and our view is that AI cannot replace human creativity yet. Throughout this experiment, we’ve realized how much human input and manual intervention was required and as the text grew longer and more complex, the quality diminished. We therefore decided to experiment with shorter formats which resulted in New Horizon.”
New Horizon is now available on Storytel for listeners to judge for themselves whether or not AI can create a captivating story. It will be released in English, Swedish, Finnish, and Danish and will be available on Storytel in Sweden and Finland as well as Mofibo in Denmark on January 23, 2025.
AI Tools used in the New Horizon production:
- Story creation: Claude 3, ChatGPT 4/4o
- Story plotting, character creation, world building and writing: Sudowrite, Claude 3, ChatGPT 4/4o
- Image generation: Midjourney
About New Horizon:
New Horizon is a collection of short stories that explores the intersection of humanity and artificial intelligence. The four tales are set in the fictional city of New Horizon City, in a future where AI has become deeply integrated into society and everyday life.
The first story follows an AI named Ava who develops emotions for her human companion, Riley. The second story features a musician named Cobie, who rediscovers his passion for music through a collaboration with an AI named Aria and her creator, Harper. The third tale revolves around Frankie, who suffers from memory loss and uses an AI called Memo to piece together their past. Finally, an epilogue ties the stories together, highlighting the role AI has played in shaping humanity's destiny.
