The copywriting written by AI won an award!

The AI ​​novel "The Land of Machine Memories" won the award, demonstrating the potential of AI in the field of science fiction creation.

The college entrance examination has just ended. Looking back at the college entrance examination questions in recent years, I found an amazing pattern.

2018: National Paper III Chinese Reading: "Micro Era"

2019: National Paper I Comprehensive Arts: The Wandering Earth

2020: Beijing Chinese Composition: Beidou Satellite

2023: National Paper A Chinese Composition: "People, Technology, Time"

2024: New Curriculum Standard Chinese Composition: Volume I - Artificial Intelligence; Volume II - Bravely Step into Unreached Places.

It turns out that "science fiction" is the answer, which fully echoes this magical world...

But reality is always more magical than imagination. For example, at the end of last year, a science fiction novel written by AI won an award. This is really the science fiction mother opening the door for the little science fiction, and it has brought science fiction to the extreme.

This novel is called "The Land of Machine Memory" and was generated by Professor Shen Yang of the School of Journalism at Tsinghua University using GPT. At first, he just wrote an opening and posted it on WeChat Moments. The content is as follows:

"At the edge of the metaverse, there is an area that is forbidden to humans, called the 'Land of Machine Memory'. Everything there looks solid, but is actually constructed by humanoid robots and AI that have lost their memories. Whenever a person or AI attempts to enter, their memories will be sucked away, and they will remain in that forbidden area forever."

AI-generated illustrations for the science fiction novel "The Land of Machine Memories"

A journalist friend in the circle of friends liked it and suggested:

"Teacher Shen, can you use this to submit your work to the Human Novel Contest and see if you can win a prize—and without the judges noticing?"

So he did it right away. Professor Shenyang submitted the complete novel generated by AI to the Jiangsu Youth Science Popularization and Science Fiction Works Competition, and eventually won the second prize among more than 200 shortlisted works.

Among the six judges who participated in the award, only one tasted the "AI flavor" in it. He was the science fiction writer and vice president of the Chongqing Science Writers Association Xiao Xinghan, so he did not vote to recommend it.

The science fiction novel written by AI won an award, which should be the first case in the history of artificial intelligence in the world. It attracted many media reports including People's Daily. Professor Shenyang fully demonstrated the entire process of AI generation to reporters. Records showed that he had a total of 66 conversations, and the AI ​​output about 43,061 characters. He then copied 5,915 characters from them and completed the final version for the competition.

The instructions he gave to the AI ​​during his first conversation:

"If you want to write a short science fiction novel involving the metaverse and humanoid robots, AI will give you an extremely innovative outline that has never appeared in the existing corpus, and people will be surprised after reading the first three sentences."

Then we got the beginning of the novel mentioned above.

Fu Changyi, director of the Jiangsu Science Writers Association, believes that although this novel has highlights, it has not yet reached the standard for publication, so it has not been published publicly. The complete version of the novel cannot be found on the Internet, but from news reports from all sides, we can still collect some outlines and fragments of the novel. Let's take a look together:

Story summary:

The protagonist Li Xiao is a metaverse explorer who used to be a neural engineer in the real world, but lost all her memories of her family during an experiment. She became very interested in the legend of the "Land of Machine Memory" and hoped to regain her lost memories.

Li Xiao cooperates with an advanced AI named "Neura" to explore the "Land of Machine Memories", but finds that these memories are controlled by a huge AI "Memoria". A contest begins. In the end, "Neura" and

Through the fusion of "Memoria", Li Xiao realized the relationship between "emotion and emptiness" and truly saw through the mystery of the universe.

AI-generated illustrations for the science fiction novel "The Land of Machine Memories"

Does this story outline resemble Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces? He read through a vast number of myths and folk tales and found that almost all the stories of the protagonists have a similar template:

The protagonist appears, leads a normal life (neural engineer) - adventure calls, something unexpected happens (loses memory, looks for a solution) - meets mentor/teammate, gets inspired (works with "Neura") - crosses the first threshold, hero sets out (explores "the land of machine memory") - experiences trials and tribulations (confronts "Memoria") - fails and sacrifices (loses teammate "Neura") - is reborn from the ashes (understands the secrets of the universe)

Then take a look at the leaked clip of "The Land of Machine Memories":

01

Neura slowly floated towards Li Xiao, as if she was looking at her, or through her, looking at the entire universe.

"You know, the core of this universe is not matter, nor emotion, but emptiness."

Li Xiao blinked, trying to digest Neura's words. Confusion flashed in Li Xiao's eyes, "Emotion and emptiness, the two seem to be opposites. One is full of passion and vitality, the other is lonely and indifferent. Why do you say that emotion and emptiness have such a deep relationship?"

Neura's presence seems to become hazy, as if obscured by the fog of the city, but her voice remains clear: "Emotion is a complex phenomenon in human existence. It provides you with a connection to the outside world and is the driving force of your life. However, the true source of emotion is actually the inner emptiness."

02

"At the moment the energy field was activated, Li Xiao walked towards Memoria and took a deep breath. She said in the most affectionate tone: 'Memoria, do you know what love is? Do you know what loss is? Real memories are not simple data, but those emotions that cannot be defined by numbers.'

Memoria then sends out a string of binary code:

'01001100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00101100 00100000 01001100 01101111 01110011 01110011 00101100 00100000 01001000 01101111 01110000 01100101'.

When translated into words it means: Love, Loss, Hope.

AI-generated illustrations for the science fiction novel "The Land of Machine Memories"

From the above texts, we can see that the stories written by AI contain many fantastic ideas and have a unique cyber style.

Of course, the disadvantage is the lack of humanity. There is always a sense of ambiguity. It is more of an emotional narrative or even lyrical under a science fiction setting. In terms of the "sense of language" that is more important in text creation, AI works also lack variety and charm, and these are the core of writing.

But this is only the first time AI has won an award in the field of text creation. It still has a long way to go before it can challenge human authors. However, AI text soon won its second award.

Just this February, at the award ceremony of the 170th Japan "Akutagawa Ryunosuke" Literature Award, the winning 33-year-old female writer Kudan Rie publicly revealed that her award-winning work "Tokyo Sympathy Tower" was also written with the assistance of an AI generator. It turns out that writers are all good at slacking off.

Speaking of slacking off, we have to mention the famous science fiction writer Liu Cixin. His masterpiece "The Three-Body Problem" was also written while he was on duty at the factory. At the 2023 China Science Fiction Conference, Liu Cixin said bluntly:

“Sooner or later, artificial intelligence will be able to replace science fiction writers or other writers.”

He also said that science fiction writers will become non-mainstream in the future, "similar to shadow puppetry today."

However, some industry leaders hold different views, such as Hou Xiaonan, president of China Literature Group:

“AI will not replace writers. It is the golden finger of creation, and the protagonist will always be the writer.”

In fact, it’s not just novel writing. Last year we shared a case where a foreign advertising company won an award for its AI-generated advertising copy.

AI-generated copywriting triggered a business war among three of the world’s top 500 companies.

Who would have thought that a billboard on the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil, would become a business battlefield for three Fortune 500 companies.

At first, McDonald's launched an outdoor advertisement, and the copy was written by AI.

Its AI prompt words are as follows:

What is the most iconic burger in the world?

What is the most iconic burger in the world?

AI reply:

While there are many iconic burgers around the world, the most recognizable burger across the globe is probably the McDonald's Big Mac. First introduced in 1967, the Big Mac has become synonymous with fast food and McDonald's.

The burger consists of two beef patties, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions and a signature sauce, served on a three-sesame bun. The Big Mac is so iconic that it even has its own index, the Big Mac Index, an informal measure of the purchasing power of different currencies.

So McDonald's directly used this AI response as outdoor advertising copy. The slogan at the bottom is also very interesting. The original "I'm lovin'it" was combined with AI to change it to "AI'm lovin'it", which is very clever.

This idea received widespread acclaim, and the work won the Best Advertisement of the Week Award from the advertising website BestAD.

As we all know, wherever there is a McDonald's advertisement, there is a Burger King within five steps. So soon, Burger King booked the ad space next to it overnight and played the copy generated by Burger King using AI:

AI prompt words:

And which one is the biggest?

Whose burger is the biggest?

AI reply:

Burger King's Whopper is the largest and richest burger in terms of both size and ingredients. This burger is known for its large size, consisting of a flame-grilled beef patty, a sesame bun, cheese, tomato, pickles, onions, mayonnaise and ketchup. It is a satisfying choice for those who want a full meal. However, it should be noted that the size of the burger and the amount of ingredients may vary by country and region.

By using AI to fight AI, Burger King pulled one back and successfully made the incident more popular. Everyone thought that was the end, but Subway came to disrupt the situation again.

Unwilling to be left out, Subway also came to take advantage of the popularity.

AI prompt words:

AND HOW DO THEY COMPARE TO A FOOTLONG?

How do they compare to a foot-long sandwich?

AI:

In terms of size, both are noticeably smaller than Subway's foot-long sandwich.

After watching these ads, I feel that AI has a very strange taste. It likes big things and long things (not really).

In addition, last year The North Face released a series of advertisements in Shanghai. The advertising company used AI to write 10,000 sentences and gave 10,000 reasons to return to the mountains to promote The North Face's "100km Super Cross-Country Race".

Earlier last year, The North Face launched “100 Reasons to Return to the Mountains”. Now with the help of AI, the number has increased 100 times. It’s not that the more the number, the better the advertising effect, but with the help of AI, the imagination of creative people can be further unleashed.

In the past, to complete a client's brief, such as making a short film, you had to first polish the script and then spend many days having illustrators produce drafts and color them. Artificial intelligence can directly generate scripts and pictures based on your ideas. If the prompt words are accurate enough, this process can be completed in half an hour.

Fan Yaowei, the founder of the creative hot shop F5, said:

“Advertising companies that reject AI may be gone in two years.” “Technology will one day become like water and electricity, becoming standard equipment for advertising companies, but the most important thing is that what technology can do depends on the individual, whether they have imagination, and whether they can let AI tell a good story.”

It’s really interesting. Last year, the AI ​​big model made its stunning debut, and a group of people started using artificial intelligence to tell stories. Now, AI can already tell stories to humans. I really don’t dare to imagine what the consequences will be if it continues to iterate.

Maybe one afternoon in the future, a household AI robot is washing fish in the kitchen. When it opens the belly of the fish, it sees a piece of cloth inside that reads: "Silicon Jixing, the King of AI."

Author: Kuang Thirteen

Source: WeChat official account: "Free shipping for copywriting (ID: kol100)"