Harry Potter fans who have already finished reading The Cursed Child and A Journey Through the History of Magic from the past two years have a new chapter in the story of the wizarding boy to tide them over—one brought to us not by J.K. Rowling, but by AI-generated text prediction.

　　两年来，哈利波特粉丝熟读《被诅咒的孩子》和《魔法史之旅》，现在他们又有了关于魔法男孩的新故事。

　　Botnik Studios created the three-page chapter, titled “Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash,” after training an algorithmic tool on all seven of the children's fantasy novels. The end result is a tale with a plot that feels soulless and meandering but like any good fanfiction, still holds a faint imprint of Rowling’s usual lilting whimsical charm.

　　但是作者不是JK罗琳，而是人工智能文本预测机器人。工作室Botnik Studios 根据前七部哈利波特设计了算法工具，创作出三页故事，名为“哈利波特与大团灰尘疑似图”。故事读起来没有灵魂，格外曲折，但是还是能在这类同人小说中感受到罗琳欢快、奇特的风格。

　　Both the chapter and the predictive text program—available on GitHub—is the work of Jamie Brew, a former writer for Clickhole and The Onion.

　　预测故事内容目前可在网站GitHub上阅读，都出自杰米·布鲁(Jamie Brew)之手。布鲁此前是媒体Clickhole和The Onion的作家。

　　The aforementioned Harry Potter excerpt was constructed with the help of multiple writers, who helped construct the sentence through a combination of algorithmic suggestion and authorial discretion. As a result, the chapter reads not like the usual word salad of text prediction, but like unusually inventive fanfiction. “The castle grounds snarled with a wave of magically magnified wind,” it begins. “The sky outside was a great black ceiling, which was full of blood.”

　　前述提到的哈利波特节选内容由诸多作家合作完成，他们在算法的建议下重组句子，间或使用作家的审慎完成故事。这样，故事读起来就不太像平常说的话，而是富有创造性的奇特同人小说了。“风受到魔力驱使，逐渐加强风力，城堡地表开始啸叫”，开头这样写道，“城堡外，天空变成了黑漆漆的顶，鲜血四溢。”

　　There are plenty of Harry Potter fanfics that explore outlandish scenarios— those featuring a pregnant Voldemort, for instance — and ones of impressive quality. Fanfiction is often used as a stepping stone for writers to get comfortable with language and worldbuilding. The process used by Botnik, which the company refers to as “collaborating with machines,” mixes the creativity of dozens of humans with the absurdity of machines trying to imitate us, and the result is sometimes, dare I say it, magical.

　　有不少哈利波特同人小说情节奇异，比如身怀六甲的伏地魔等，水平还都颇高。同人小说是作家用来搭建语言和故事的垫脚石。Botnik工作室选择“和程序合作”，是将许多人的创造力和机器的荒诞结合起来，模仿人类，不得不说，有时候确实还挺神奇的。