Can AI write a novel?

There’s been a lot of discussion in the writing community about the threat of Artificial Intelligence recently. Could AI write a novel? Would it write a best-seller? There are over a half-million books published in the U.S. each year. It’s difficult for independent authors to break away from the pack—to write a best-seller.

Among Paula Hawkins’ best-selling novels is “A Slow Fire Burning.” It’s a murder mystery—a story whose complications include the perspective of three women whose connections to the victim are explored in the book. Here are the opening paragraphs:

"Blood-sodden, the girl staggers into the black. Her clothes are disheveled, hanging off her young body, revealing expanses of pale flesh. Shoe lost, foot bleeding. She is in agony, but the pain has become inconsequential, eclipsed by other sufferings.

"Her face is a mask of terror, her heart is a drum, her breath is the stricken pant of a fox gone to ground. The night’s silence is broken by a low hum. A plane? Wiping blood from her eyes, the girl looks up at the sky and sees nothing but stars.

"The hum is louder, lower. A car changing gear? Has she reached the main road? Her heart lifts, and from somewhere deep in her gut she summons the energy to run.

"She feels rather than sees the light behind her. She feels her shape illuminated in the black and knows that the car is coming from behind her. It’s coming from the farm. She turns.

"She knows, before she sees, that he has found her. She knows, before she sees, that it will be his face behind the wheel. She freezes."

Excerpt From "A Slow Fire Burning" by Paula Hawkins

I asked Meta.ai to write the opening paragraph of a novel with a similar theme. (Meta.ai is a Large Language Model deployed by Facebook’s parent company.) Here’s what I got:

“In the sleepy town of Ravenswood, where secrets lurked beneath the surface like tangled roots, the brutal murder of 12-year-old Jake Wilson shook the community to its core. The investigation that followed would unravel a complex web of relationships, revealing a tapestry of love, deceit, and obsession woven around the young victim. At the center of the mystery were three women: Emma, Jake's mother, whose grief concealed a hidden past; Olivia, the enigmatic teacher, whose influence on Jake's life was shrouded in suspicion; and Ava, the reclusive neighbor, whose connection to Jake was both fascinating and unsettling. As Detective Jameson delved deeper into the case, he would discover that nothing was as it seemed, and the truth behind Jake's tragic fate would challenge everything he thought he knew about human nature.”

Which one would you want to read?