A new campaign for Renault in Sweden sees its Zoe electric car “write” Jack Kerouac fan fiction for test drivers via artificial intelligence.
According to agency Edelman Deportivo, one of the major obstacles to widespread electric-car adoption is commonly labelled “range anxiety,” or the fear that a vehicle has insufficient range to reach its destination. So the effort aims to show how far a Renault can go in a single charge, by showing a car going where no other has gone before — by turning automobile into “author.”
The “Written by Zoe” promotes the Zoe, which has a 400km range. The brand obtained permission from the the estate of Jack Kerouac to write authorized fan fiction stories based on the themes and style of writing of his novel “On the Road” (which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year).
The “stories” are entirely composed through live driving data from Stockholm test drives in the Zoe, with the help of AI-technology. The idea is that, by analyzing “On The Road” and using the car’s internal and external sensor data to turn it into contextual storylines, the system writes unique stories for each driver.
Read more: Creativity Online