Back to news

PJ PEREIRA: A NOVEL VISION OF CREATIVITY

Mark Tungate 2024-07-01

Taking time out of his busy Cannes schedule, the co-founder of Pereira O’Dell talks about literature, tech – and what happens when they interact.

PJ PEREIRA: A NOVEL VISION OF CREATIVITY#2

Most people think there’s a difference between art and technology. PJ Pereira doesn’t see a space between them. More accurately, he sees the space – and he lives in it.

“My uncle was a computer programmer,” he explains, “so I learned to program when I was 7 years old. For me it was no different to writing or drawing: I’ve always looked on programming as a creative task.”

The co-founder of Pereira O’Dell – part of the Serviceplan group – was intrigued by AI long before it became an issue for our industry. In fact, as the author of several science-fiction novels, he’s spent many hours tinkering with it in both reality and imagination.

Earlier this year he found a way of combining literature and technology in a generative AI tool that’s both useful and mesmerising. It’s called Hypnovels and it emerged from a new San Francisco-based innovation lab, Silverside, co-founded by Pereira O’Dell and Serviceplan.

The idea was born when PJ figured he could use AI to create an animated trailer for his latest book, The Girl From Wudang, a cyberpunk martial arts thriller written under his pen name, PJ Caldas. He recalls: “In a way I already had the longest prompt you can imagine, which is an entire book.”

First he tested a paragraph – and the result was promising. “You’re never going to get a traditional film, because most of the images we picture from a book are only implied by the text, and an AI can’t ‘read’ like we can. It can’t turn a book into a movie script. But it can produce these flickering, meditative images that capture the atmosphere of the story.”

After working out how to convert fiction into a language the AI could deal with, he tried an entire chapter. The result was spectacular. “My mind was blown. In all humility, this was not something I designed. It was something that happened to me. I experimented, I pressed play and…boom!”

That early experiment was developed into a fully operational tool. The first chapters of beloved classics like Peter Pan, Moby Dick and Jane Eyre have now been turned into animated Hypnovels – and authors are invited to try it on their own texts too. A handy marketing tool for publishers, but not only.

“The world of education is freaking out about this in the best possible way,” says PJ. “They tell me it’s great for reluctant readers, people with attention problems, people with dyslexia. There are so many barriers to reading today, and hopefully this is one area where we can help.”

PJ tested the idea on his own son, who has dyslexia. “He loves anime, so I got the AI to render the first chapter of Dracula in an anime style and showed it to him. He totally loved it. ‘I gotta read the whole book,’ he said. And trust me, reading is hard for him.”

Crucially, he observes that one of the pleasures of using generative AI is that every individual gets a different result. We’re all Harry Potter, with our own magic wand. “So if a kid who’s assigned to read 1984 in class is also asked to make a film of one chapter, from their point of view, and show it to their classmates, that could revolutionise the way we embrace reading.”

In a way it was inevitable that PJ would create something like Hypnovels. The Girl From Wudang is his fifth novel – although his first in English. His gateway to reading as a kid was the revered Brazilian children’s author Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948). “He was great at bringing Brazilian folklore into modern storytelling. Everything I write, now I think about it, actually stems from that experience. All my novels are a combination of the ancient world, old magic, and new magic – which is technology.”

There are so many barriers to reading today, and hopefully this is one area where we can help
PJ PEREIRA: A NOVEL VISION OF CREATIVITY#4

Despite his love of tech, he didn’t use AI to help him write the book. He’s not sure any writer who cares about their art would do so.

“People don’t write because they want to create ‘a book’, an object,” he says. “They write because they have something inside them that needs to come out, or they’ll explode. It’s something you need to do – and using Chat GPT does not give you that pleasure.”

He adds that content generated by AI is essentially derivative. “The value of an idea or a work of art lies in its origin. Somebody can be really good at copying the style of Van Gogh. But you’ll still go a museum to see the original. Because the value of the painting is that it came from the person who created that style.”

How does he even find time to write in his insanely busy schedule? “I write at night, when the family have gone to bed – I’m a night person.” He also obsessively plots his books, so when he sits down to write, each chapter exists as a set of bullet points. He doesn’t have to face a blank page.

One subject he didn’t have to research for his thriller is martial arts – PJ is a black belt holder in several disciplines. Rather than choreograph the fight scenes for the story, he tried to capture the “feeling” of fighting. “Because after all, I fight. I actually know how a face feels on my fist.”

He insists that martial arts is a creative endeavour, requiring talent and innovation. “That’s why they call it martial arts.”

Amidst the clamour and braggadocio of Cannes, it’s inspiring to sit down with somebody whose creativity is seemingly borderless – and yet is also a nice guy. And I’m not just saying that because he knows how to fight.

Back to news

Related articles

USING VIOLENCE TO COMBAT VIOLENCE: MEDIA GRAND PRIX
February 17, 2025
Headline makers
HITTING THE NAZIS IN THEIR MERCH: RESPONSIBILITY GRAND PRIX
February 13, 2025
Headline makers
USING A FAMOUS LENS TO CONDEMN WAR: PRINT GRAND PRIX
January 30, 2025
Headline makers
CLAIRE YOUNG, GIRL&BEAR: "ANY OPPORTUNITY TO ELEVATE THE MAKERS, AND I'M THERE"
November 28, 2024
Headline makers
See more articles