'I Like My Big Rat Wife': Meet the People Using Chatbots to Write Custom Fiction

While the publishing industry frets over how authors are using AI, many readers are taking things into their own hands. When Petra Ferraz de Novaes isn't at work, she's probably lost in a fantasy crafted with the help of artificial intelligence . Novaes, a 36-year-old software engineer from Brazil, has always loved storytelling. But making every little decision that goes into it--from style and syntax to character development--felt impossible. So in 2024 she asked an AI model to bring one of her ideas to life. Novaes was delighted by the eccentric, sometimes wayward interpretations of her prompts, which carried the narrative in unexpected directions.