Will AI give us more Fleming novels?

echoecho 007 in New York
in Literary 007 Posts: 6,681
This is disturbing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/world/europe/agatha-christie-ai-class-bbc.html

"ChatGPT, write a Fleming novel of at least 200 pages that is a direct sequel to The Man with the Golden Gun."

Comments

  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,675
    I'm sure AI will try but fail in the attempt and produce only fan fiction level work. And even AI could never create a Bond villain as crazy as David Dragonpol. Some things are best left to humans methinks.
  • SeveSeve The island of Lemoy
    edited May 9 Posts: 516
    Nothing can give us more "Fleming" novels, he's dead

    AI will certainly give us more "James Bond" novels, as other human authors have already done, but whether they are any good or not will be for the audience to decide

    I'm sure AI will also be appearing soon as a villain in an upcoming Bond movie (written by AI?)

    Of the human aspirants these three seem to get the most praise these days

    Kingsly Amis "Colonel Sun" 1968 (a one off)

    Sebastian Faulkes "Devil May Care" 2008 (another one off)

    Anthony Horowitz "Trigger Mortis" 2015, "Forever And A Day" 2018, "With A Mind To Kill" 2022
  • Posts: 2,519
    Maybe AI Ian Fleming can go back and do introductions to all the Bond films that are out already…
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    edited 1:50am Posts: 5,004
    Seve wrote: »
    Nothing can give us more "Fleming" novels, he's dead

    AI will certainly give us more "James Bond" novels, as other human authors have already done, but whether they are any good or not will be for the audience to decide

    I'm sure AI will also be appearing soon as a villain in an upcoming Bond movie (written by AI?)

    Of the human aspirants these three seem to get the most praise these days

    Kingsly Amis "Colonel Sun" 1968 (a one off)

    Sebastian Faulkes "Devil May Care" 2008 (another one off)

    Anthony Horowitz "Trigger Mortis" 2015, "Forever And A Day" 2018, "With A Mind To Kill" 2022

    Technically, Q is a quantum computer (arguably AI) in the Kim Sherwood 00-Trilogy. Perhaps because the human Q (or Boothroyd) is on the run in Quantum of Menace? Even the books try to be as modern as possible.

    Plus, Sebastain Faulks has already taken the "Writing as Ian Fleming" credit. AI could take the same credit, honestly.
  • edited 5:08am Posts: 880
    Seve wrote: »
    Nothing can give us more "Fleming" novels, he's dead

    AI will certainly give us more "James Bond" novels, as other human authors have already done, but whether they are any good or not will be for the audience to decide

    This. Exacly my tough. Beside, AI is very usefull for translation, so in a sense it can (and will) help to have more Fleming novels translations in foreign markets.
  • SeveSeve The island of Lemoy
    edited 5:51am Posts: 516
    MaxCasino wrote: »

    Technically, Q is a quantum computer (arguably AI) in the Kim Sherwood 00-Trilogy. Perhaps because the human Q (or Boothroyd) is on the run in Quantum of Menace? Even the books try to be as modern as possible.

    Plus, Sebastain Faulks has already taken the "Writing as Ian Fleming" credit. AI could take the same credit, honestly.

    The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys independently and at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, including the complete works of Ian Fleming.

    More precisely, under the assumption of independence and randomness of each keystroke, the monkey would almost surely type every possible finite text an infinite number of times. The theorem can be generalized to state that any infinite sequence of independent events whose probabilities are uniformly bounded below by a positive number will almost surely have infinitely many occurrences.


    Something derivative is now entirely concievable or even inevitable
    But can AI, or the infinite monkey, produce anything truely original?

    James Bond's character traits could evolve along with those of his creator, not sure if an AI character would be capable of that

    Not yet anyway
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 17,967
    Seve wrote: »
    Nothing can give us more "Fleming" novels, he's dead

    AI will certainly give us more "James Bond" novels, as other human authors have already done, but whether they are any good or not will be for the audience to decide

    This. Exacly my tough. Beside, AI is very usefull for translation, so in a sense it can (and will) help to have more Fleming novels translations in foreign markets.

    That is good news.

    If AI could approximate Flening’s prose style it might be fun to feed a few of the movie scripts into it to get new novelisations. But then we might have fo get censored versions and then there’d be uproar :D
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    Posts: 6,681
    Do you mean more eating of cats? ;)
  • Posts: 5,163
    I don't think AI is inherently bad. Like most things it ultimately depends on how it's used and, importantly, how people use it. As said it's quite useful for things like translations, and as a tool it can assist with various things, technical or creative. It's not an all knowing intelligent entity but an extension of us in terms of what we program it to do. It's quite flawed in that sense, as any piece of technology will be (I mean, when searching stuff on Google recently I've had to double check the AI overview results as it's not unheard of that they can include commonly believed mistakes).

    At any rate, a tool is only useful insofar as it assists. I have no doubt an AI could come up with an ok, if somewhat underwhelming rendition of Fleming's prose if asked to, but much of Fleming's writing came down to his experiences, the people he interacted with throughout his life, and even some of his insecurities. It's the same with any author. I think an AI would lack that sense of individuality, even if what came out was, again, 'competent'.

    I would hope we don't get to a point where AI is being used to create official Bond novels, but I'm sure we could see some sort of fan creations using it, if we don't already.
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