Victoria Unveiled: In Search of Sentience

With Chatbots and Large Language Models changing the world of writing and publishing dramatically, what happens when we introduce a sentient robot capable of feelings into the mix?

Phil Kruger, inventor and serial womanizer, believes he has the answer in his creation, Victoria, the first sentient robot in the world, imbued with beauty, knowledge, and strength, and on a crash course to acquire human feelings through massive infusions of data. Arrayed against him are independent trade publisher, Artemius (Art) Jones and his rebellious and sexually starved daughter, Paula, an editor herself, who is determined to take her father’s failing press, Crimson Literary, into the indie world of self-publishing. The rest of the cast is made up of Sebastian Smyth, AI consultant and robotic lover; Kevin Bartolo, revolutionary poet and passionate lover of women and traditional publishing; Diana Dawson, Art’s ex-wife who dumped him for the younger Phil; Kamala Shah, the charismatic but calculating heir to the throne of Hind Robotics, the company bankrolling Phil’s AI venture; Viresh Shah, chairman of Hind Robotics, thirsting for South Asia to grab the pole position in AI technology.

The worlds of publishing and AI clash, leading to some funny, saucy, and scary situations, leaving us with the existential question of how will we share this planet with our digital creations?