"Cultural Scandal".. An Arabic Novel Written Entirely by Artificial Intelligence Sparks Controversy

The novel, as a literary genre, is one of the sources of enjoyment in contemporary Arab life, with the late critic Jaber Asfour describing our era as the "Age of the Novel," due to the large number of annual publications from the ocean to the Gulf. Novels top the bestseller lists, and many are adapted into successful films, while major awards offer enticing monetary prizes to writers.

Artificial Intelligence Invades Narrative

However, this narrative magic is threatened by the loss of "authenticity," as some young or talentless writers turn to artificial intelligence techniques to write novels. This was evident at the recent Cairo International Book Fair, where cultural activists discovered complete narrative texts generated entirely by AI programs, which their authors neglected to edit, resulting in publications that included technical instructions directed at the application, something that some considered a "cultural scandal."

Examples of Automatically Generated Texts

One of the novels showed the response of the "ChatGPT" program to the author's instructions regarding the development of the characters' relationship, saying: "Thank you for the clarification, I will continue narrating the events with a focus on the development of the relationship between (Ruh) and (Iyad) after planting the flowers while maintaining hope in their relationship," before the natural narration of the text began.

Publishers Warn Against Deceiving Readers

Publisher Amir Al-Naji, director of "Arabic Pens" publishing house, stated that such incidents occur sometimes but have not yet turned into a catastrophic phenomenon, emphasizing that the house will take further precautions to prevent the spread of such forgery. He clarified that using artificial intelligence is acceptable for assisting purposes such as cover design or translation, provided it is disclosed transparently, while presenting an automatically generated text as human creativity is considered "a cultural disaster that cannot be accepted."