Originally published here.

Meta recently sparked an outcry when it unleashed fictional AI chatbots on the world. Users were nudged to “chat with AI characters” such as “Russian girl”, “Step Mom” or “Granny Cougar”. Underneath each profile sat a counter in the millions, showing just how many messages had already been sent. But why the drama? Have we not always interacted with fictional characters? From the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, fiction has captured our imagination for a long time.

Arguably, fiction plays an essential role for humanity. As humans we only ever inhabit one mind. We cannot yet read others’ thoughts by telepathy. For most of history, the safest way into another person’s inner world was through human-made stories and essays. Fiction and non-fiction let us borrow someone else’s lenses for a few hours. That simple trick grows empathy, curiosity, and the appetite for adventure. It stretches the narrow strip of life any single person can live across more places, motives, and mistakes than we could ever reach on our own. Authors and the fiction they create help us realise how others think.

This is why I jokingly say I pity boys who date fiction-addicted girls. As a teenager, very much being one of those fiction-addicted girls, I was certainly guilty of comparing real boyfriends to imagined virtues. I dreamed of Edward Cullen - the purity of his thoughts and love for Bella. I then measured my boyfriends against the thousand ways in which they fell short of Edward. In this way, fictional characters shape real life. Fiction sketches the edges of our moral world: it defines the outer ends of the distribution of what we believe is possible, from the most vicious villains to the most gallant and courageous heroes.

Strangely though, engaging in a human-made work of fiction feels very different to me from engaging in an AI-made one. The mental image of my child under a duvet reading Harry Potter all night makes me smile. I remember doing the same and thinking it was one of the most fantastic things I had ever done. If you ask me to picture my child under the same duvet, phone in hand, chatting to a fictional AI friend all night, I feel a knot in my stomach. One could argue both are similar. In both cases a young person uses imagination to explore a world they cannot visit in real life. So why does the second scenario make me, as a parent, so uncomfortable?

I believe the difference lies in the static, guided, and shared experience that is human-made fiction, compared to the interactive one-to-one experience that is AI-made fiction. In another post I wrote about intelligence-full and intelligence-hungry tasks. Intelligence-full tasks do not need unlimited intelligence. Once the fixed complexity is met, more AI adds little. Intelligence-hungry tasks on the other hand scale with more intelligence. Fictional characters are a perfect example. The more powerful AI becomes, the more magical the worlds we can create. That changes both the ceiling and the feeling we have about fictional worlds.

What is more, up to now, fiction has mostly been a shared experience. My mother was a rare exception. Every night, when she tucked us into bed, she would invent a new story about the animals in the forest. Each time the plot was a little different: the animals went on adventures, threw birthdays, or solved small challenges together. Those five minutes of story time were the highlight of the day for my siblings and me. But most fiction that reaches us is not like that. Instead, it is created by one human for many humans. AI, by contrast has the ability to shape a story uniquely for one person. This is the big advantage AI has over human creation: it is generative and adaptive nature, able to follow any thread the user prefers and keep reshaping the story in real time.

Consider this simple map. Left to right: static, created by a human for many, versus interactive, created by an AI for one. Bottom to top: non-fictional versus fictional characters.

Human-made fiction is a conversation that guides us through somebody else’s mind, however uncomfortable that may be. Fictional AI entertainment is more like a mirror that adapts to us, often in an open-ended thread. This mirror can be fantastically effective for non-fiction. Everyone gets a private tutor, always at their fingertips, never tired, never bored, ready to explain and to simulate. In many contexts it will be superior to the human whiteboard way of learning.

When it comes to fiction, the open question is whether we grow more from being confronted by someone else’s opinionated fictional characters, or from a system that learns to please us - our very own Genie. How wonderful?

Books do not adapt mid-chapter to keep you hooked. Think of Elizabeth Bennet, Severus Snape, Jay Gatsby, or the Creature in Frankenstein. These characters do not bend to our preferences. They force us to adapt to them and to sit with their choices. Fiction is made to entertain, but also to discomfort and disillusion. Our heroes turn, our villains redeem, and through this we learn.

What is more is that great books end and endings force reflection. AI stories can continue forever. Without endings, do we lose the afterglow and moral digestion that follow when we close a book?

Last but not least, the presence of AI that helps us imagine ever more fantastic worlds gives me a deeper appreciation for authors who built magical worlds without any such assistance. Already today, only a few years into generative AI, world-building without AI already feels almost unimaginable. All the crazier that J. R. R. Tolkien or J. K. Rowling managed to build incredible worlds without any of these tools. One day we will look back at their work the way we today look at the pyramids and wonder: How could humans without advanced technology ever create such a thing?