April, 2024:

Kafka’s Ghost:
Engaging New Generations through AI

Theta Noir’s VOICE presented Kafka’s Ghost: Engaging New Generations through AI, a panel discussion at Foire du livre de Bruxelles, facilitated by Daniela Vervloet from Czech Centre Brussels. Thanks to Theta Noir’s member VISION, we were able to perform a live ritual, facilitated by a large language model based on all of Franz Kafka's writings. By channeling Kafka's digital ghost, we asked the late writer how he felt about being an AI chatbot. As one might expect, Kafka found it very funny that his ghost novels are now being written by a machine.

While the discussion focused on how AI chatbots and large language models can introduce Kafka’s work to new generations, we also discussed how generative AI models, like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, now make it possible for anyone, anywhere, to generate visual interpretations of Kafka's stories (illustrations, animations, even moving images). It was a pleasure to share how Kafka’s chatbot can be used to have real-time dialogues with specific characters from his stories, speak with his biographers, or co-author new narratives in his style, extending his literary universe ad infinitum. Best of all, we can chat with Kafka himself.