Generating a long story of several thousand words with narrative coherence using Large Language Models (LLMs) has been a challenging task. Previous research has addressed this challenge by proposing different frameworks that create a story plan and generate a long story based on that plan. However, these frameworks have been mainly focusing on maintaining narrative coherence in stories, often overlooking creativity in story planning and the expressiveness of the stories generated from those plans, which are desirable properties to captivate readers' interest. In this paper, we propose Collective Critics for Creative Story Generation framework (CritiCS), which is composed of plan refining stage (CrPlan) and story generation stage (CrText), to integrate a collective revision mechanism that promotes those properties into long-form story generation process. Specifically, in each stage, a group of LLM critics and one leader collaborate to incrementally refine drafts of plan and story throughout multiple rounds. Extensive human evaluation shows that the CritiCS can significantly enhance story creativity and reader engagement, while also maintaining narrative coherence. Furthermore, the design of the framework allows active participation from human writers in any role within the critique process, enabling interactive human-machine collaboration in story writing.

A British teenager born with only one hand is learning to ride a bike after being fitted with the world's first medically-certified 3D-printed bionic hand. Fourteen-year-old Aimee Ashton, a talented art student from Hull, was born with part of her arm missing and no left hand. Aimee had previously used prosthetic arms but stopped using them because'they didn't do anything' and weren't responsive to movement. But she has since been fitted with the'Hero Arm', developed by Bristol-based company Open Bionics, which costs around £10,000. The battery-powered arm picks up signals from muscles allowing the user to do tasks with both hands.

The air traffic management service NATS has begun a trial to understand whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be used to help reduce flight delays. A project is now underway, within NATS' bespoke Digital Tower Laboratory, at Heathrow Airport to test whether a combination of ultra HD 4K cameras along with state-of-the-art AI and machine learning technology can be used to help improve the airport's landing capacity in times of low visibility and improve punctuality. Heathrow's 87 metre tall control tower is the highest in the UK and provides commanding views of the airport and surrounding landscape, but its height can also mean it disappears into low cloud, even when the runways below are clear. In those conditions, where the controllers have to rely on radar to know if an arriving aircraft has left the runway, extra time is given between each landing to ensure its safety. The result is a 20% loss of landing capacity, which creates delays for passengers and knock-on disruption for the rest of the operation.

Artificial intelligence algorithms can now replace social media marketing agencies, paint a "new Rembrandt", project the image of a perfect mother, compose commercially viable music and even direct ads, trailers and short films. Just how worried should creatives be? According to Matt Webb, global chief technology officer at Mirum, an AI algorithm is theoretically capable of mining data from a brand and a brief and combining it with information gathered to solve problems. In that sense, AI could conceivably answer a creative brief, he concludes. The reasoning and processes used to teach AI to compose music turn out to be remarkably similar.

When Dove unveiled a huge billboard in London's Waterloo station that claimed to depict the'perfect mum', hackles were, understandably, raised. Beleaguered mothers took to Twitter to criticise the brand for piling even more pressure on mums struggling under society's critical gaze. But all was not quite as it seemed. The cherub-faced, blonde, white woman featured on the giant poster was not a real mum… or even a real person. She was an artificial intelligence-created image, synthesised by a computer that had been fed 1800 images of mothers from advertisements, magazines and social media.