Evaluating Large Language Model Creativity from a Literary Perspective
Murray Shanahan Catherine Clarke
This paper assesses the potential for large language models (LLMs) to serve
as assistive tools in the creative writing process, by means of a single,
in-depth case study. In the course of the study, we develop interactive and
multi-voice prompting strategies that interleave background descriptions (scene
setting, plot elements), instructions that guide composition, samples of text
in the target style, and critical discussion of the given samples. We
qualitatively evaluate the results from a literary critical perspective, as
well as from the standpoint of computational creativity (a sub-field of
artificial intelligence). Our findings lend support to the view that the
sophistication of the results that can be achieved with an LLM mirrors the
sophistication of the prompting.