AI

One-Word Prompts Teach AI to Write Like 19th-Century Novelists

Kari Jaaskelainen

— 1 min read
One-Word Prompts Teach AI to Write Like 19th-Century Novelists

Can AI write like Dickens with a single word?

What if one token could cue an AI to channel Austen, Twain, or Melville? This study fine-tunes large language models so a minimal, single-token prompt triggers 19th-century novelist styles.

  • How they checked it: An AI detector trained on authentic sentences judged style and explained why, complemented by syntax comparisons and explainable AI (attention- and gradient-based) to spot the linguistic cues.
  • What they found: Generated text captured hallmark patterns—sentence rhythm, punctuation, and word choice—distinct to authors like Dickens, Austen, Alcott, and Melville.
  • Why it matters: Offers a scalable alternative to human evaluation and a transparent way to study and control literary style.
All models, data, and tools are available.

Read more: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.20459v1

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.20459v1

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