Can a computer write poetry? Oscar Schwartz in his fascinating presentation during TedxYouth in Sydney left no doubts that computer can create poetry sounding like William Blake’s or Frank O’Hara’s poems. Further, algorithm can produce poem sounding so much better than poem of not one outstanding poet. What is more, it turns out that artificial intelligence (AI) can compete with human for a literary award.

The Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award is only prize involving human and applicants who are not human beings (AI programs and others). However, this year was the first time when submitted literary texts were created by coauthorship between human and ‘nonhuman beings’: AI programs. Among 1,450 novels received in the competition, 11 works involved AI programs.

AI novel called “The Day A Computer Writes A Novel” was produced by Hitoshi Matsubara and his team at Future University Hakodate in Japan. Although AI novel did not win the final prize, it passed the first screening process for a domestic literary prize. According to jury, the meta-narrative was not enough good to get the prize. It turns out that while structure and mechanism of novel were programmed very well, character descriptions were poor created. It is only a matter of time, when machine improves a programming of more ‘human’ part of text. Nevertheless, this is just the beginning of literary competition between human and nonhuman being.