Kotb, Heba Waheed Abd El-Hameed Kotb

doi:10.21608/jarts.2025.407486.1504

"Dual-Voice Writing: human author and Artificial Intelligence Compared in We Have Never Been on Earth by Rocco Tanica Linguistic and Stylistic Study

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Heba Waheed Abd El-Hameed Kotb Kotb

Ain Shams University / Al Alsun Faculty

10.21608/jarts.2025.407486.1504

Abstract

We Have Never Been on Earth, by Rocco Tanica, published in 2022, is the first Italian novel born from the collaboration between a human author and an advanced language model (GPT-3). The work tackles philosophical and narrative themes with originality, through an intriguing stylistic and linguistic interplay between two distinct voices: that of the author and that of the artificial intelligence, embodied in the character Out0mat-B13.
This study aims to analyze the novel in order to assess the “human quality” of the texts generated by the AI. The analysis, conducted on multiple levels, examines the variety of registers, the main stylistic and linguistic features, and the AI’s ability to simulate emotions, thoughts, and communicative behaviors typical of human beings.
The AI model proves to be surprisingly aware of language, able to adapt to various registers — from the lyrical to the parodic, from the colloquial to the fairy-tale-like — and demonstrates a high level of skill in constructing dialogue, to the point of appearing, in some cases, “more human than humans.”
Despite some weaknesses — such as occasional inconsistency in references and a narrative cohesion that is not always stable — the overall result highlights a gradual convergence between artificial and human-generated texts.
The thesis shows that AI-assisted writing does not represent a replacement for the human author, but rather an expansion of expressive possibilities, opening new perspectives for reflection on language and storytelling in the digital age.

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