Vocab Term: Story Generation

Definition: Using computational technologies to help aid with narrative creation has been a topic of exploration for the past fifty years. Finding ways to use technology in order to create appealing narratives has been challenging for AI. Besides certain disagreements about what makes a narrative appealing, being able to understand how to logically present a cohesive story which has emotional appeal has been a challenging roadblock to automated story generation. As a consequence, past story generation systems have often been exploratory without much success. Though, as of the year 2024, AI has made significant and concerning strides regarding story generation. Many novels written by self-published “authors” who used AI story generation can be found on Amazon.

DH Source: There have been many other story generation methods in the past fifty years; such as, Novel Writer, Tale Spin, AUTHOR, UNIVERSE, and FABULIST, but all of these programs pale in comparison to some of the stories that AI is able to generate, especially when it comes to writers who input the correct prompts. “The use of AI planners for narrative generation is based on the assumption that a sequence of actions leading from an initial state to a goal is a good approximation of a story” (Gervas 476).

Commentary: The output of AI generated content is overwhelming. There are many books on Amazon that were written by those who primarily used AI, and by those who haven’t written any fictional stories before AI. The result, people end up buying books on Amazon that are neither readable nor enjoyable. The problem with this has to do with the output. Before an online community has a chance to provide negative feedback, that very same author has already published a different book on Amazon under a different pen name.

Pablo Gervas. “Story Generation” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.