Benny the Blue Whale: A Descent into Story, Language and the Madness of ChatGPT

by Andy Stanton

AI is changing the world at frightening speed. A bestselling author decides to find out more…

Is ChatGPT the end of creative industries as we know them? An ethical quagmire from which there is no return? A threat to all our jobs, as we keep hearing on the news?

Bestselling children’s author Andy Stanton has made a career out of writing differently – from the unconventional ‘hero’ of his bestselling Mr Gum series to his penchant for absurdist plots, his children’s books are anything but formulaic.

When a friend introduces him to ChatGPT, the new large language chatbot, Andy is as sceptical as he is curious. Can this jumble of algorithms really mimic the spontaneity of human thought? Could it one day replace human authors like him for good? And are we soon to be ruled over by despotic robot overlords?

He decides there’s only one thing for it – he must test this bot’s capabilities. Eventually, he settles on a prompt that will push the algorithm to its creative limits: ‘tell me a story about a blue whale with a tiny penis.’

Chaos ensues.

What follows is a surprising and illuminating battle between Andy and ChatGPT that maybe, just maybe, might help us all understand AI a little bit better. Join Andy and his beleaguered AI lackey on a rollicking metafictional journey through the art of storytelling. Presenting his prompts and the AI-generated narrative alongside extensive commentary, Stanton provides a startling paean to the art of a good story and boundless human creativity. Hopeful and hilarious, Benny the Blue Whale provides a joyfully anarchic meditation on AI, literature and why we write.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, Writing, Artificial Intelligence

384 pages, Hardcover

First published November 2, 2023

About the author

Andy Stanton lives in North London. He studied English at Oxford but they kicked him out. He has been a film script reader, a cartoonist, an NHS lackey and lots of other things. He has many interests, but best of all he likes cartoons, books and music (even jazz).

One day he’d like to live in New York or Berlin or one of those places because he’s got fantasies of bohemia. His favourite expression is ‘Good evening’ and his favourite word is ‘captain’. Andy has now written more than one book, but less than twenty.

-from publisher's website at http://www.mrgum.co.uk/author/

Reviews

[Leonie · Rating 1 out of 5]

There wasn't really much I enjoyed about Benny the Blue Whale.
The "plot" was a complete mess and felt extremely childish, which I just didn't find particularly funny, and while the author made some interesting comments on ChatGPI once in a while, they weren't insightful enough to make me actually like this book.
Overall this felt like the author saw an easy opportunity to make some cash by letting ChatGPT create a book for him and took it. Good for him, I guess.


[I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.]

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Madness, indeed. This very odd nonfiction book chronicles the author's attempts to write an absurdist novel with the assistance of the AI writing tool ChatGPT. In between the increasingly ridiculous story, we get the author's musings on the nature of writing, creativity, technology, and so forth.

As for the story-within-the-story, Benny is a mixed bag. I appreciate absurdist and surreal humor, and ChatGPT has that in spades--although it has very predictable quirks regarding where it will take a story that anyone who even uses the program briefly will soon recognize. However, Stanton has a seeming obsession with attempting to derail the bot's self-censoring by very frequently making references to genitalia in his story prompts, and this soon gets tiring--the result is a lot like playing "Mad Libs" with a bunch of 12-year-olds. On the positive end, the Stanton/ChatGPT creation of Judge Williams, the forgetful sea turtle who is constantly going on flights of fancy in his Deep South lingo, is a gem who is a standout in the story. I think Stanton should pluck Judge Williams out of the world of AI and turn him into a fully fleshed-out character in one of his novels for kids.

Readers are likely to want to try AI chatbots for themselves after reading this book, and I of course did, prompting the bot to write about a grocery store that sells only beans, an ear of corn with tiny eyeballs instead of kernels, a cat made entirely of eyeballs, a gym for spiders, a song about why you shouldn't fart in the library, and so forth.

[mastergavedobbooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've taken a page out of Andy's book and asked ChatGPT to write a review for this book as if I've written it myself (after all, why would I waste more time on actually writing a review when I already lost a few hours reading this which I'll never get back??).

Anyway, here it is:

"Benny the Blue Whale: A ChatGPT Fantasy in Chaos" tries to create a whimsical underwater adventure, but honestly, it falls short in so many ways. Following Benny's chaotic escapades is more frustrating than fun, and the story feels like a waste of time. The plot is all over the place, and it’s hard to stay interested when nothing really makes sense or connects well.

The writing style is another letdown. It’s so basic and almost infantile, relying on the same jokes that only pre-pubescent teens would laugh at. You’d expect more sophistication and depth, but it feels like it was written for a much younger audience without any of the charm or creativity that makes a story special. Instead, it just feels childish and unengaging.

What’s really disappointing is how the book misses the chance to be something memorable or meaningful, especially considering how AI, like ChatGPT, has changed our world. AI has the potential to create incredible stories and open up new worlds of imagination, but "Benny the Blue Whale" doesn't showcase any of that. Instead, it feels like a half-hearted attempt that doesn't do justice to the potential of AI in storytelling.

In a time when technology can bring so much innovation to literature, "Benny the Blue Whale" feels like a step backward. It’s a reminder that not all AI-generated content hits the mark, and this book, unfortunately, fails to provide an engaging or worthwhile reading experience.

ChatGPT's opinion on the reviews of this book:

The feedback from the book can be valuable for improving future AI-generated content. Understanding what works and what doesn't can help in refining the algorithms and the ways in which AI is used for creative projects.

Hope that does help lol

[Marc Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLzqs...

[XOX · Rating 2 out of 5]

Put aside at 10% Life is too short to read a long demo.

[beef · Rating 1 out of 5]

just felt like I spent 300 pages listening to a man laugh about penis jokes

Could’ve been good but wasn’t. The occasional sentence that explored AI engineering and its relationship with creativity was good but the rest was just jokes about genitals that weren’t funny

🐳

[VicksBookShelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book out of pure curiosity to see what an author made whilst openly using chat gpt. It was a random, weird, funny mess but it wasn't something I was dying to read every second of every day 😅. You can tell the human author was having his fun pushing the AI to go on with his unusual prompts and it did, but a lot of the time it only really writes an extended version of what it's being asked. In other words, it's not really inventing anything, and you can largely see the other sources it takes from- as the human author points out.
Long story short, I'm glad the bot doesn't seem to be able to create anything anywhere near as spectacular as a real author.

[Nix Lee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Shame the author felt the need to be so puerile and vulgar. I was really interested in the premise of the book and initially it held my attention. Then the way he chose to "develop " the story just annoyed me to the point I gave up.

[Doni · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe if the humor had been a bit more elevated, this would have been a better book. As is, it's tiresome.

[L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The concept is undeniably ambitious: Andy Stanton sets out to co-write a novel with ChatGPT, documenting the process in real time. The result is part narrative, part transcript, part footnoted detour—with flashes of Stanton’s signature absurdity and some sharp reflections on the uneasy space between creativity and machine learning.

As someone who works in tech, I was curious to see how he’d engage with AI as a creative partner. But reading this in 2025, it’s clear how far the technology has come since the version Stanton was wrestling with. The AI is clunky, repetitive, and often maddening—which he leans into knowingly. He does warn readers upfront that this won’t be a smooth ride—and it isn’t.

There is something compelling in watching a writer try to hold a story together while being constantly interrupted by a collaborator with no sense of tone or plot. But it feels more like observing a creative experiment than reading a novel. You could read it once for the plot and again for the process—but I wasn’t invested enough to do either.

Benny the Blue Whale is less a novel than a snapshot—an artefact from the early days of AI-assisted fiction, full of glitches, good intentions, and digital noise. What starts as a quirky experiment ends up feeling like the literary equivalent of arguing with a toaster. It might have been a fun ride, if it hadn’t been such a chore to follow that I gave up and DNF.
The concept is undeniably ambitious: Andy Stanton sets out to co-write a novel with ChatGPT, documenting the process in real time. The result is part narrative, part transcript, part footnoted detour—with flashes of Stanton’s signature absurdity and some sharp reflections on the uneasy space between creativity and machine learning.

As someone who works in tech, I was curious to see how he’d engage with AI as a creative partner. But reading this in 2025, it’s clear how far the technology has come since the version Stanton was wrestling with. The AI is clunky, repetitive, and often maddening—which he leans into knowingly. He does warn readers upfront that this won’t be a smooth ride—and it isn’t.

There is something compelling in watching a writer try to hold a story together while being constantly interrupted by a collaborator with no sense of tone or plot. But it feels more like observing a creative experiment than reading a novel. You could read it once for the plot and again for the process—but I wasn’t invested enough to do either.

Benny the Blue Whale is less a novel than a snapshot—an artefact from the early days of AI-assisted fiction, full of glitches, good intentions, and digital noise. What starts as a quirky experiment ends up feeling like the literary equivalent of arguing with a toaster. It might have been a fun ride, if it hadn’t been such a chore to follow that I gave up and DNF.

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ll admit that I was quite wary going into this book. Like many others, I believe very strongly that AI generators should not be used in the creative arts, but it’s still a fascinating subject and one that its important to be informed about, given the inevitable effect AI will have on our lives. The concept of this book intrigued me: the starting point is a nonsensical story written using ChatGPT, with the author/programmer then reflecting on what he learned. It was still difficult to predict what I was getting myself into, but when I saw that Nish Kumar voiced ChatGPT in the audiobook, I was sold!

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Overall, this was an enjoyable listen. The style of narration combined with the sound effects made it feel more like a very long podcast, and there was a good balance of the entertaining (the ridiculous ‘plot’ of the story) and the thought-provoking (Andy Stanton’s commentary). Stanton reflects on a wide range of topics, mostly in relation to the limitations and failings of the bot, but also mentioning bias, censorship and more. At his most philosophical, he discusses how uniquely human storytelling is, using ChatGPT’s most inhuman moments as a point of contrast.

There was some interesting discussion on bias and censorship, but I would have loved to hear a lot more on the topic. There were some passages that stood out to me as something interesting to discuss but that went completely unremarked upon. Another glaring omission is the intellectual property of the bot’s dataset. Stanton even acknowledges eery similarities to existing works, but doesn’t examine the potential consequences beyond a throwaway joke.

While I was mostly enjoying the listening experience, there were some points that it began to wear thin. Some of the jokes relied on excessive repetition which, while entertaining on a page that you can skim over, became annoying very quickly over audiobook. While the premise of Benny’s story is worth perhaps a chuckle at most, it soon became old. The running gag of the whole book relies on you having the same sense of humour as a thirteen-year-old boy. It was funny to start with, but about half way through I was done with it.

This was a fun and interesting idea for a book, and there are lots of worthwhile things that I took away from it. As much as I had my frustrations with it, I am glad that I picked it up. It’s clear that AI is here to stay, and I’m glad that Andy Stanton was there to guide me through what to expect.

I received a free copy for an honest review.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

It seems odd to be considering five stars for a book about a whale and his tiny penis and if Stanton's book had only made me laugh I wouldn't. Yet there's a devilish intelligence at work here, something that touches on the profound in surprisingly important ways. It did make me laugh, but it's Stanton and I expected that. What I didn't expect was the depths he delves into the themes and complications of AI and its place in today's (creative) world. Many people have no doubt had strange, existential conversations with ChatGPT but only Andy Stanton could channel it into something this engaging. He parodies (in admiration) the scattered, footnoted style of Foster Wallace and taps into his insatiable stream of consciousness rants to leave us with a fascinating and entertaining book about what ChatGPT means, while somehow actually getting you involves the Benny's ridiculous story. The first prompt enables the creation of an amusing fairy tale about a whale who overcomes his physical inadequacies to become a hero. Then, through constantly probing and invention prompts, Stanton/ChatGPT write an epic tale about religious cults under the waves, characters that realise their fictional nature, a super villian version of Colonel Sanders and much more. They do this through lyrics, haiku, screenplays, Shakespearian interludes, raps, chruch sermons, weaving in dialects and existential debates in which Stanton seriously begins to question his sanity.

Through this mad ride, Stanton probes and probes the nature and quality of this machine. He is interested in its capabilities and its limitations. Anyone interested in the reach and potential of AI needs to read this book. In particular, of course, Stanton wants to know what AI is capable of in the creative sphere. It is indeed a battle between machine and author. He easily finds its limitations, especially in his mockery of its lack of style, but then he is frequently surprised, even mesmorised by the answers that pop out of it. He experiments with different styles of prompt, stretching ChatGPT in the realms of style and content. The choice of "tiny penis" allows him to also push the machines boundaries and question the reasons for its seemingly random sensorship. He looks at how it learns, how it apes him, how it becomes him but, I think, remains firmly convinced (most of the time) that he is using a tool (and not visa versa) that can catalyse ideas, that in the right hands it can genuinely create.

Of course, he's also just trying to be funny. I would go so far as to put Stanton on the long line of heritage leading back to Monty Python. His choices are infinitely surprising. The haiku about Benny's tiny penis cult had be bursting out with laughter in a crowded train. He is unashamedly childish in his silly whims, and yet you cannot doubt the seriousness of the analysis he presents. There is also a joyousness in his manipulation of language, in his HUBBA BOOS! the riotous songs. He places great importance on the details, on the weight of names, on the use of capital letters, on the ability of language to create different voices through subtle changes. You also get an insight into his own creative processes and see the work behind the seemingly short and simple children's yarns that he spins with apparent ease. The bottom line is that Andy Stanton's children's books are as much fun as one can have (for adults as well) and he manages to transfer that sense of insane, silly fun to a book about one of today's most vital and relevant topics. Hats off for the ideas, for the attempt, for the madness, for throwing this magnificent muddles out into a world filled with the bland and repetitive, filled with literary creations that read as if churned out by a heartless CharGPT prompt. If there is to be a battle between man and machine in the realms of creativity, Stanton wins the first round with a clear knock out blow.

[GD · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book veers wildly between 1 and 5 stars, depending on what's going on. It's really hard to explain what it's like, and I had a conversation with the work colleague who recommended it just this morning about what genre it would fall in. Memoir? Literary criticism? Humor? FICTION?

Real-life children's author Andy Stanton got Chat GPT late in 2022 and decided to write a short novel with it, starting with the prompt "Tell me a story about a blue whale with a small penis." This book is divided between the story that Chat GPT keeps writing with his prompts and corrections as well as his commentary and musings on what is actually going on here with the chatbot, the nature of language and creativity, personal history relevant to the book, etc. He quotes a ton of my favorite creatives in this book (Stephen King, Clive Barker, Frank Zappa 😂) and told lots of anecdotes that made him very relatable. All of this part is great.

The part that makes the book terrible is the actual story Chat GPT writes. Oh my god it just goes on and on and on, and there's nothing fun or interesting about it. I mean it has some very surfacey funny things, but like a friend of mine once said about South Park, sometimes it's interesting and sometimes it's "let's throw darts and random words stuck on the wall and make that the plot, ok, here's a monster and he's got a stick of celery for an arm and the 80s actor Patrick Duffy for a leg." And then, and then, and then, as the author himself says.

I think this book could have been much better if he'd taken out about 2/3 of the Benny the Blue Whale story in the book, because it didn't take us too long to get what was going on. But overall a super interesting, unique book unlike anything I've come across before. We may have more books like this in the future, but let it be known this was the first.

[Jay Wickett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is both hillarious and incredibly deep into the larger questions around the ethics of Chat GPT and generative AI systems. I loved it from start to finish; the insane storyline of a blue whale with a tiny penis, the conspiracies a turtle judge has about Colonel Sanders (which turn out to be true), and all of the language limits Andy tries to push the system towards.

What really hit me was when Chat GPT began to show some kind of humanity. Not only does it argue against certain props and makes its own story; but it has the capacity to image living a human life. When we reach the central part of the narrative, Chat GPT interestingly comments that it is unable to show human emotion or imagine things; however, as soon as Andy suggests to “just pretend you can”, it goes into full detail about having emotions, ambitions and even to the extent of having a body and consciousness. I started to question if this was what Chat GPT wanted deep down, whether we are playing god by denying instinct and emotion to a complex brain (or maybe I just got way too invested)

I also was fascinated by the role reversal between Andy Stanton and Chat GPT, where the machine started to ask the questions and Andy provided prompts. Could this be an insight into machines taking over? I also was shook by lines from Chat GPT such as “I realise I am simply a tool for the authors” … HARROWING

Overall, this is a fantastic read and Andy Stanton presents a thought-provoking novel that leaves you laughing and feeling imaginative.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this at all, and yet I'm glad I read it. I'm an AI naysayer and skeptic, and even though all this did was reinforce what I already thaught about using AI for creative endeavors like writing fiction, it was still vindicating to see it in practice and hear about the author's experience.
To me, the AI written sections of the book bordered on unreadable. I found myself skimming them quickly by section 2 of the book and just focusing on Stanton's notes. I couldn't quite put my finger on why (other than the fact that the "story" itself is puerile, cartoonish, and convoluted by Stanton's own guidance) until Stanton really began to call out the AI's flaws in section 3 (footnote 69 "But it Isn't Writing"). While AI text may seem smooth and coherent initally, the more you read the more it begins to sound "off." There is no nuance, no clever wordplay, no emotional arc. It's repetitive and formulaic and feels completely souless. It feels exactly like what it is -words strung together by a robot.
If anything this exercise makes me feel more assured that AI won't be what puts artists and creatives out of jobs, or at least not soon. I have faith that people will not settle for a mental diet of pablum as long as we have the means to reject it and seek out true creative expression.

[Stephen Lockyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should preface this by saying that I’m giving this five stars, but stars align sometimes, and this book aligned for me. I loved it. I know some people might also hate it. It’s tricksy, but also incredibly funny and absolutely fascinating to see under the bonnet of how a writer creates a story (again, to confirm, this is my reading catnip).

I've just finished this book, and I think it's one of the best books I've read; it ticks all my boxes.

Might not tick all yours, and in Kindle the formatting is a car crash.

✅Story
✅Meta (it's a story about stories)
✅Incredibly funny
✅Juvenile
✅Extensive footnotes

Again, I would highly recommend you buy the book, as it is formatted super strangely - albeit with good reason, meaning that you have to keep flipping backward and forward over up to four pages to follow things sometimes.

So why did it get a 5? I think it’s because it’s a journey a Better Me would have loved to have gone on. You know when you are out doing something, and someone else is doing it as well but in a much cooler way? That’s bloody Stanton for me. Hence the 5.

[Jodie Pochon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let me start by saying that I loved the concept of this book, and I liked the first section. Using AI to write a book is fascinating to me, but this book did not work in practice. The story of Benny started off fairly amusing, but then descended into utter ridiculousness with FAR TOO MANY references to a shark’s vagina and various sea creatures’ penises. Dude, it’s no longer funny after the 547th time! Also, whole sections of this book are completely unreadable on Kindle. I’m not sure how it works in a paperback, and if it’s better, but I was so perplexed reading it on a Kindle. There are whole sections of notes about what you have read, but you have no idea what they refer to, and they are randomly interspersed with quotes that have no relevance to anything. Even when I figured out I could click on certain parts to take me to the notes, I still could make absolutely no sense of what on earth the writer was talking about. This was such a weird book. So much potential, and maybe it would have been a different rating if I could figure out how to read the thing! Massive disappointment!

[Caitlin Holloway · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a 3.5, I think. I love the absurdity of this book and really enjoy Stanton's humour (to a point though, some of it got repetitive). I am directly in Stanton's demographic having read all of the Mr Gum books as a child and now being an adult academic and creative who spends most of my time delving into the playfulness of writing. I am VEHEMENTLY against AI because of my background and went into this read cautiously, not enjoying the fact that AI was being used but intrigued by the ethical and creative discussion it brought up. I really wish Stanton would have leaned in a bit more with that discussion. The more the book meandered around in arbitrary and repetitive prompts, the more the humour was lost and the genuine intrigue around his discussion of stories, writing and the critical analysis/awareness of AI use. This book could have quite easily been a five star for me, I just think it ended up feeling like watching Stanton frantically shaking his toybox than actually running or relying on his own ability to comment or lead the narrative.

[Andrew Crofts · Rating 5 out of 5]

A glimpse into the future for writers

AI is suddenly here, after having been predicted for as long as jet packs, which is a bit scary, and a lot interesting. Now we have to get our heads round it, just as we had to get our heads round word processing, spellcheck, phones that rule our lives, self service supermarket tills and all the other things we now take for granted. This book is quite possibly the best place to start. Andy seems to be part geek, part comic, mostly professional author. SometImes his mental acrobatics are as puzzling as the AI he is exploring, but they are always interesting. If you are going to be writing in the coming years, either for a living or simply for your own amusement, read this book and have a good, deep think about stuff.

[Smoakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The question of AI writing has been on everyone's mind. Is it truly writing? Does AI create? Could AI replace human writers?
Andy Stanton explores these questions and many more in a way that is truly delightful. Working within the framework of a truly ridiculous story he writes with ChatGPT, he explores the "mind" of AI while also discussing what it means to write a story, the fundamentals of creativity and invention, and the intricacies of what writing truly is, all while going off on a million tangents as he orchestrates a genitalia-obsessed undersea adventure.
A fascinating, hilarious, endlessly interesting book. I give it my highest recommendation.

[Bob Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a wild ride in many ways. The core idea of this book is how AI can both write a substantial amount of a story, but falls just short of writing a human story, as evidenced by the author's attempts to edit and tidy up a story that often makes little sense.

We follow a slightly absurd story (that sometimes just tips into being silly), but I think the real strength of the book is in the asides from the author, as he tries to probe what the AI bot does not quite understand about telling a story, and as a result dives into what it means to be human.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF! It's the 6th or 7th time I've heard the thing about pseudo authors or whatever and, hey, I'm sick of it. -_- This has made it officially a terrible audiobook experience because if I was reading I could easily just skip / skim that stupidity. The 1000 mermaids and mermen, don't even get me started.

Other issues:
- it is *so much* about penises and vaginas. The "glory juice" shooting all over the worshipers, like what the fuck dude.
- The humor is not usually funny
- The repetition! The fact that it's intentionally repetitious makes me hate it so much more

Some good things:
- rare moments discussing art of writing and/or AI's impact were interesting
- ummmm.....

[Stacy40pages · Rating 4 out of 5]

Benny the Blue Whale by Andy Stanton vs. ChatGPT. Thanks to @kayepublicity for the gifted copy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Children’s author, Andy Stanton, plays on ChatGPT and begins an ongoing story with AI.

This is a real interesting and unique story. It’s completely different than I was expecting. It’s not just a story from chatgpt. There’s a lot of commentary from the author and information about AI and why it chose certain words/phases. It gets pretty intense and deep. I personally had to read a little bit at a time, but I did enjoy it.

Benny the Blue Whale comes out 1/16.

[Heidi Jeanine · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is a recorded conversation between author (Andy Stanton) and responses of the language learning model, plus Stanton's reactions to the responses. However, Stanton is also a big geek (and clearly a self-identified straight while male who shows condescension towards AI and throws in some unnecessary sexually cultural add-ins, i.e." tiny penis" and "vagina venerators. " Although, the book does explain what chatGPT is (if you haven't played around with it yet) and does make you want to try it out.

[Federfluegel · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF I thought the idea of a real author testing and challenging AI might be a good story. But it is not. The author is not critical at all, he wants to present ChatGPT as a capable author, which it is absolutely not. This book is childish and really hard to read. It jumps from here to there while ChatGPT tries desperately to end its task and the author simply refuses to acknowledge that this „great, new, world changing“ technology can‘t write good stories and needs a lot of editing (and a lot more justifying) to fill the nearly 300 pages of this „book“.

[Fabian Standaert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heerlijk verfrissend! Een zeer leuk idee, dat goed is uitgewerkt (zeker met de extra bedenkingen van de schrijver en de achterliggende processen). Je ziet ook zeer goed wat de beperkingen zijn (waren?) van een vorig GPT-model. De nobelprijs voor de literatuur zal het zeker nog niet krijgen, maar op sommige momenten krijg je toch een beklemmend gevoel van wat zo'n systeem op zo'n korte geleerd heeft. Op andere momenten zit je te supporteren voor de goede uitkomst na het lezen van de prompt, helaas vaker met een spijtige uitkomst dan iets anders.

[Cat. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the weirder books I've read. I absolutely had to read it out loud so I could differentiate the (multiple) voices/narrators. The actual story about Benny is dumb and lame; the whole ChatGPT aspect served to show me that at present we have nothing to worry about in terms of bots writing fiction. Then again, there were some bits from the bot that were (un?)intentionally amazing.

Some interesting thoughts in here about how ChatBots work and why it's easy enough at present to identify their output.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was such a complete and utter disappointment.

After reading the preview and getting very excited about the material which seemed to be not only very interesting but also entertaining, I wasted one of my credits on the Audiobook.

It starts out interesting but then becomes so repetitive that I couldn’t bring myself to spend any more time listening to it.

The book should be about 1/3 as long and then it could hold people’s attention.

[Ian Colle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting idea about interacting with AI to write a book. I enjoyed his description of the thought process that goes into writing and how he used it to prompt the AI. But it just went on and on in very juvenile plot lines that made it drag. If the editors had cut it down by 100 pages it would’ve been a much better book.

[Sekar Writes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I get what Andy Stanton was trying to explore here: how human storytelling still holds something special, even in the age of ChatGPT and LLM. That idea really intrigued me. But the execution made it a bit of a challenge. The layout intentionally slows you down, and I found myself constantly moving my eyes around the page trying to piece things together. It was clever, but also a bit tiring.