W. F. Howes, RBmedia’s UK publishing brand, has secured the audio rights for Andy Stanton’s exciting and unconventional adult debut, non-fiction title Benny the Blue Whale: A Descent into Story, Language and the Madness of ChatGPT.
 
Intrigued by the launch of ChatGPT, Andy Stanton—who has made a career out of writing differently—set about testing the AI bot’s capabilities and pushing it to its creative limits by prompting it to tell him “a story about a blue whale with a tiny penis.” What follows is a surprising, illuminating, and chaotic battle between the author and ChatGPT that provides a hilarious, anarchic meditation on AI, literature, and why we write.
 
In the audio edition, the bestselling author of the Mr Gum series will voice his own ChatGPT prompts, while Nish Kumar—the award-winning stand-up comedian and host of The Mash Report—will play the role of ChatGPT, as the human and AI duo participate in an unlikely, and deliriously funny, creative collaboration. 
 
Andy Stanton commented: “Writing Benny turned my life into a chaotic near meltdown—which is sort of the same as writing any book, except that this time I wasn’t just up against myself, I was playing word games with a maniac. It was lovely to finally meet that maniac in the form of Nish—he makes the funniest, most endearing version of ChatGPT I could imagine.”
 
The world audiobook rights were acquired from Oneworld by Georgia Holmes, Senior Acquisitions Editor at W. F. Howes. Holmes said: “Through his Mr Gum series, in particular, Andy has established himself as one of the UK’s most beloved and imaginative storytellers, but ‘Benny the Blue Whale’ is a completely new departure. It is a bold, innovative, and genius experiment in fiction that explores the potential (and flaws) of AI and what our future relationship with technology might look like. Nish Kumar, with his expert comedic delivery, timing, and tone, is the perfect narration partner for Andy, and I can’t wait to see how audiobook listeners respond to their stellar performance.”  
 
The Benny the Blue Whale audiobook will be published in December 2023.