A book trailed by controversy for its use of AI, “Sympathy Tower Tokyo” by Rie Qudan is a fun and quick read — but it shouldn’t be mistaken for easy or breezy. This speculative work, translated by Jesse Kirkwood, is as ambitious and intellectually agile as its megalomaniacal protagonist.
The story set in contemporary and near-future Tokyo won Qudan an Akutagawa Prize in 2024. When accepting the prestigious literary award and in subsequent interviews, Qudan said she conceived of the novel and included text verbatim from conversations with chatGPT, an admission which brought out trolls and critics in Japan and abroad. She doubled down later, publishing an experimental story almost entirely drawn from AI-generated text.
The use of AI, though, is one of the least notable parts of “Sympathy Tower Tokyo,” which is perhaps a sign of the times we already find ourselves in. The characters use a fictional chatbot seamlessly, as a part of life; they’re aware that they talk to it, vaguely wonder what its limitations are, and carry on.
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