A literary experiment · Newfane Common Books · 2026
AI Poe and the
Quest for Good Slop
Three frontier models write Gothic horror in the shadow of Edgar Allan Poe, explain how they did it, judge the stories blind, and then confront what the experiment suggests about AI, authorship, creativity, ethics, and consciousness.
How the experiment works
1. PromptThe same literary challenge goes to three frontier models.
2. StoriesEach writes its own Poe-inflected Gothic tale about AI.
3. ProcessThe models explain their strategies and aesthetic choices.
4. Blind judgingThey critique, rank, and attempt to identify all three stories.
5. AfterwordsThey reflect on what they have done and what it might mean.
About the book
The point is not simply to ask whether AI can imitate Poe. The more interesting question is what appears when several powerful language models create, criticize, classify, misidentify, defend, and interpret one another's work.
Dan Lloyd supplies the Preface and Epilogue. The AI-generated texts are identified throughout.