The AI version of the second volume of «Dead Souls» was printed in Russia

Otroshenko said that a finished copy is already in the hands of journalists and specialists. According to him, work on the edition lasted a year and a half, and artificial intelligence created not only the text but also the illustrations.

Writers and young editors took part in preparing the book. The project curator clarified that he monitored compliance with Gogol’s poetics, the development of the idea and plot, and, according to him, the plot idea belongs to a human.

Otroshenko also noted that artificial intelligence is capable of creating dialogues in Gogol’s style and humorous situations, but without training and a set idea, it will not write the second volume on its own. He named one of the project’s goals as attracting the younger generation to reading Gogol and studying his legacy.

In August 2024, Sber announced a project to create a version of the second volume of “Dead Souls” with the help of the GigaChat neural network and specialists in Gogol’s literary legacy. At the time, Sber’s press service said that historians, literary scholars, and biographers were introducing the neural network to the writer’s works and style, his letters, archival materials, surviving chapters, and drafts of the second volume.

Gogol burned the manuscript of the second volume of “Dead Souls” in February 1852. Five incomplete chapters in draft versions have survived.