Forget 1000 monkeys, could a PC write Shakespeare?

There are very few authors who don't use a personal computer to compose their works but, what if the computer could write a book on its own? That's precisely what a piece of software called MEXICA aims to do, and in fact is doing. MEXICA, developed by Rafael Pérez y Pérez, is a computer program capable of authoring stories all by itself.

MEXICA's work isn't half bad if you believe blind comparisons between it and the work of a human author. According to The Discovery Channel "In an Internet survey that pitted the computer-generated stories against other computerized stories, as well as stories written solely by a human, readers ranked MEXICA's stories highest for flow and coherence, structure, content, suspense and overall quality." That may be due to MEXICA's editing skills.

As MEXICA works it analyzes emotional content and connections between characters, as the program's author describes it, "The program views a story as interesting when tension levels increase and fall throughout the piece. If the program finds that the story is boring or incoherent in places, it will replace or insert atoms until a version is deemed satisfactory." So, in essence, MEXICA keeps writing and rewriting until it is able to satiate its own internal yawn-o-meter.

Drawing on key elements of human creative writing process, the thought behind a system like MEXICA is baffling. Pérez y Pérez hopes that MEXICA will help us write better stories, but doesn't necessarily see a program like MEXICA replacing the craft of an actual, human, writer. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to polish my resumé.

Tags: artificial inteligence, ArtificialInteligence, creative writing, CreativeWriting, news, writing