Westland’s Graphic Novel about the future of AI includes a special chapter created by using Artificial Intelligence

An unusual collaboration between Indian comic artist and author, Appupen and Laurent Daudet, Physics professor from France, making this a truly edgy and relevant book for our times.

31 January 2024, National: Westland books today launched a new graphic novel co-written by author and comic artist Appupen, and Laurent Daudet, physics professor from France. The graphic novelist’s latest book talks about the emergence of AI and its ramifications on humans and the world we live in

Dream Machine: AI and the REAL WORLD, delves deep into the world of AI, what it can and cannot do, and what we can expect from it in the near future. The book also grapples with the question of morality, ethics and the risks involved in the usage of AI. The graphic fiction plays with the fear that is concerned with growing usage and dependency on Artificial Intelligence via a game involving AI avatars, selling immortality as the final goal.

Taking this idea further, the authors also trained an AI on Appupen’s art for the book, creating five AI generated alternate futures for the story, with prompts.

Speaking on the book, Appupen said, ”People must have a well informed idea about AI if they are to form an opinion on it. This is what Dream Machine tries to do, by cutting through the fun, fluffy facade of AI given to us by big business. I am not scared of AI but I am scared of the humans behind it. It is a powerful tool, in the hands of a destructive species.”

Appupen and Laurent Daudet will be doing a three-city tour in February 2024 with the French Institute in India, taking Dream Machine to diverse audiences.

Dream Machine will also be available in French and German worldwide. Dream Machine released in India on 29 January 2024 and is currently available at all major bookstores and online

About The Book

DREAM MACHINE IS A TIMELY STORY ABOUT THE ADVENT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS.

The novel begins with a founder of an AI start-up at the core of the ChatGPT revolution, who is on the verge of selling his technology to a large digital conglomerate when he begins to see and hear things that raise questions about the true motivations of his client.

Is this the deal every entrepreneur dreams of, or the start of a long and difficult battle that threatens humanity as we know it?

Writer and artist Appupen and co-writer Laurent Daudet deliver the most urgent story of our time in all its many dimensions. Exciting, baffling, ethically challenging, it demands engagement, and action.