On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.

It was an extraordinary news story.

The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,

mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.

One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for

Lucan. It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime. I'm Alex Fontunzelman. This is

the Lucan Obsession. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.. Hello and welcome to London South Bank Centre.

Today, Johnny Pitts and I are here in the Purcell Room,

but before long we'll be travelling into the future

to discuss artificial intelligence and the novel.

With the rise of AI, the boundaries of creativity are shifting,

and we find ourselves on the cusp of a new literary frontier.

That's right, but can AI truly harness the essence of human storytelling?

Are we destined to witness an era where novels are crafted by machines? Or could this collaboration between human creativity and artificial intelligence

lead to an unprecedented fusion of literary brilliance? Well said Johnny. Thank you. Well said

yourself, Elizabeth. Except it wasn't really else who said it, was it? What you're doing?

All right. What you actually just heard was entirely generated by AI after a prompt

through Elizabeth's smartphone, and that's just small fry. We're on the brink of a world in which

every part of our lives is touched by artificial intelligence from brain surgery to music making.

But what we want to know today is what does this shift mean for the novel?

Will AI conjured novels written in the style of our favourite authors be the norm? Or will the imaginative,

intellectual and emotional complexity of great works of literature from Austin to Dostoevskita

...