Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!Germany.EU.net!mcsun!uunet!news.uiowa.edu!news.weeg.uiowa.edu!teicher
From: teicher@news.weeg.uiowa.edu (Thomas Eicher)
Subject: Computer writes book
Message-ID: <1993Jan29.014443.13124@news.weeg.uiowa.edu>
Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 01:44:43 GMT
Lines: 35

I grabbed the following off NEXIS: 


            AI Expert Copyright (c) 1991 Information Access Company;
                 Copyright (c) Miller Freeman Publications 1991

                                  August, 1991

SECTION: Vol. 6 ; No. 8 ; Pg. 59
BYLINE: Newquist, Harvey P., III

AI WAXES POETIC

   Cloning a well-known figure is no joke.  Just This Once is a new  novel 
making the rounds in the publishing world.  It was written by  Scott French, 
who claims that 10% of the  novel  was written by him, 25% was created by an AI
program he created to imitate novelist Jacqueline Susann, and the remainder was
a collaborative effort between himself and the  computer.   Susann, who died in
1974, wrote the definitive trash  novel --and one of history's all-time
bestsellers--Valley Of the Dolls.

   French used Nexpert Object and took development lessons from Bechtel AI
Institute to program his system with hundreds of formulas he had developed
regarding Susann's essential plots and characterizations; it created a 350-page
novel,  which some in the literary community are calling "computerized literary
ghost writing." While not all the reviews on his methodology are positive (some
think it is a violation of Susann's intellectual property), French claims, "I
didn't copy her words or even sentences, but her way of thinking. I don't think
you can copyright the way a person thinks." If French gets a book deal, this
would be the first  computer -generated  novel  ever published.  Just this once
indeed.

Thomas Eicher
U. Iowa Law Library
teicher@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu
