{"id":102936,"date":"2025-08-30T10:31:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T10:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/102936\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T10:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T10:31:08","slug":"chatgpt-controversy-is-the-least-interesting-part-of-sympathy-tower-tokyo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/102936\/","title":{"rendered":"ChatGPT controversy is the least interesting part of ‘Sympathy Tower Tokyo’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A book trailed by controversy for its use of AI, \u201cSympathy Tower Tokyo\u201d by Rie Qudan is a fun and quick read \u2014 but it shouldn\u2019t be mistaken for easy or breezy. This speculative work, translated by Jesse Kirkwood<\/a>, is as ambitious and intellectually agile as its megalomaniacal protagonist.<\/p>\n

The story set in contemporary and near-future Tokyo won Qudan an Akutagawa Prize in 2024. When accepting the prestigious literary award and in subsequent interviews, Qudan said she conceived of the novel and included text verbatim from conversations with chatGPT, an admission which brought out trolls and critics<\/a> in Japan and abroad. She doubled down later, publishing an experimental story<\/a> almost entirely drawn from AI-generated text.<\/p>\n

The use of AI, though, is one of the least notable parts of \u201cSympathy Tower Tokyo,\u201d which is perhaps a sign of the times we already find ourselves in. The characters use a fictional chatbot seamlessly, as a part of life; they\u2019re aware that they talk to it, vaguely wonder what its limitations are, and carry on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A book trailed by controversy for its use of AI, \u201cSympathy Tower Tokyo\u201d by Rie Qudan is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[50169,457,1921,96,50168,7428,50167,16789,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-102936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-akutagawa-prize","tag-books","tag-chatgpt","tag-entertainment","tag-jesse-kirkwood","tag-literature","tag-rie-qudan","tag-translation","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}