With a name that sounds like something a parent would slowly mouth to their infant, NaNoWriMo is an annual "challenge" in which many thousands of seemingly well-adjusted people decide to write a novel in a month. "Do I need something special to write a novel?" the nonprofit that puts on this exquisite torture reasonably asks on its website. National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 with 21 participants, and now nearly half a million take part every November. The event is also the name of the organization that gamifies the exercise, hosting participants on its online platform. To "win" NaNoWriMo, you need to produce a minimum of 50,000 words in a month (about the length of The Great Gatsby)--or 1,667 words a day, a number, NaNoWriMo tells us, that "scientists have determined to be the perfect amount to boost your creativity."

On a Friday morning in October, in the lobby of a sleek San Francisco skyscraper, Matthew Butterick was headed toward the elevators when a security guard stopped him. Politely, the guard asked if he was lost. It was an honest mistake. He looked more like the type of guy who makes fun of the typical corporate warrior. He explained, equally politely, that he was in fact a lawyer with a legitimate reason to be in the building. His co-counsel, Joseph Saveri, leads an antitrust and class-action firm headquartered there.

"In recent years, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized various industries, including the world of art. With AI-powered algorithms and machine learning, artists are now exploring new frontiers in the realm of visual art." That was how ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, suggested we start this story. We asked it for an introduction to an article in which four artists and professors of the practice at SMFA at Tufts sat down to weigh the pros and cons of AI art generators. Contrary to ChatGPT's rosy view, they say it's early to call AI art a revolution, and they question just how meaningful those "new frontiers" will be.

"AI will be the best or worst thing to happen to humanity." How does this technology impact artists? Can #AiArt growing communities contribute, specifically to the living-now among us (and quite possibly struggling) artists whose works are fed to the algorithms without their consent? The endeavours that are complex, beautiful, dangerous, and challenging are more valuable in contrast to something common, simple and easy, naturally. To have that distinction removed or obfuscated in any way will undermine the core value structure of society as we know it. Again Hyper-Novelty comes to mind.

Find out how robots can help you become an artist. Emerging technologies allow artists to engage with AI assistants. Mlearning ai & AI art + AI robots

We posed five questions on the topic of advertising and creativity to a GPT-3-based A.I. system, through an interface designed by artist/designer/programmer murat. Its answers are surprisingly and sometimes shockingly insightful and accurate. Check out the one-of-a-kind interview below. They want it to go away, and they want their world to be perfect without interference from ads. The average person wants this so badly that many will pretend that there is no value in advertising at all, even if they are aware of the benefits it provides.

I pour a cup of coffee, sharpen my pencil, and get ready to create. I've dusted off a half-conceived novel outline I abandoned three years ago, but this time I'm not waiting for my muse to intervene. Instead I hit the play button on the Creative Thinker's Toolkit, an audio lecture series from The Great Courses that I've downloaded on my computer. Gerard Puccio, a psychologist who heads the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State, and the voice of the toolkit, tells me to engage in "forced relationships." Choose a random object, he instructs. I scan my office and settle on a bag of Skittles left over from Halloween. Next, he says, describe the object's attributes. "Sweet, round, colorful, chewy," I write. I start to draw more fruitful connections.

Nintendo is coming out of a rough patch in its 128-year history. After spending most of the 00s riding high on the success and profits of its DS and Wii consoles, the current decade has seen the Japanese company struggle to adapt to the changes that its rivals and smartphones have wrought upon the video game world. The death of company president Satoru Iwata in 2016, who presided over a creatively and financially brilliant period in Nintendo's history, left many wondering how the company would find its way again. In March 2017, Nintendo's fortunes turned around again with the launch of the Switch, a smart portable games console that can also be docked next to a TV and played at home. It has proven extremely popular, and its flagship games Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2 and Zelda: Breath of the Wild hoovered up awards last year, including three Baftas at this month's ceremony.

It started in 1986, in the sort of castle you'd expect one of its characters to climb. In the three decades since it improbably took up within the halls of a 19th century neo-Renaissance Brittany keep, French multinational games publisher Ubisoft has turned out some of gaming's grandest franchises. From Rayman's ghost-limbed antics to the tactically encyclopedic Tom Clancy games, the crypto-byzantine Assassin's Creed series' edgy roof-running to Just Dance's infectious bust-a-moves, Ubisoft has turned quirky, technically involuted concepts into industry exemplars. TIME recently spoke with Ubisoft cofounder, chairman and CEO Yves Guillemot about the company's origins, what he's learned about overreaching, recent threats of hostile takeovers, what interactivity means for the future of the species, and why, of all things, a castle. Actually, the fact that I was surrounded by brilliant and creative people. Brilliant and creative people were really what helped me to continue to go forward.

Much of today's hype around artificial intelligence (AI) is concentrated in a few areas: enabling futuristic applications like self-driving cars, helping conversational interfaces like chatbots come to life, and making business more efficient and predictable. But in this episode of "Behind The Numbers," we focus on how AI is being used to spur creativity in areas like art, music and storytelling. The podcast kicks off with a new intro song--at least for this episode. The song, titled "Daddy's Car," is unique because it was generated by AI from Sony's Computer Science Research Lab in Paris and arranged by a human composer, Benoît Carré. Much of the track is generated from suite of Sony's AI tools called Flow Machines, which is trained from around 13,000 existing compositions across a variety of styles.