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In July 2023, programmer and A Song of Ice and Fire fan Liam Swayne used ChatGPT to generate unofficial continuations titled The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. The project was an AI-assisted fan experiment—not an authorized release, not a completion of George R.R. Martin’s novels, and not evidence of how Martin intends to end the series. The story is now about three years old; the official books remain unpublished.
The books Martin has not published
A Song of Ice and Fire currently has five published main-series novels: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. The fifth book appeared in July 2011. Martin has planned two more: The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.
Martin’s official website continues to present The Winds of Winter as forthcoming; the official material cited here gives no confirmed release date for either remaining novel. The long wait has led readers to wonder whether the series will be completed, but that is a concern, not a fact about Martin’s intentions. The headline claim that he “may never finish” is speculation, not an announcement.
Liam Swayne’s AI experiment
In a project reported on July 27, 2023, Swayne set out to see how far ChatGPT could be pushed to generate long-form fiction. He used it to expand an outline and produce prose for unofficial versions of both planned books. He was not Martin’s collaborator or representative, and contemporary reporting described the project as an experiment rather than an effort to replace the author.
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The files were reportedly shared as PDFs through GitHub-linked resources. Their current availability has not been independently confirmed here. Whatever their present status, they are not editions published or authorized by Martin or his publisher, and they are not part of the series’ canon.
How the project was assembled
This was not simply a matter of entering “write the last two books” into one prompt. Swayne’s reported workflow combined several tools: ChatGPT for outlining and generating passages; the Chrome extension ChatGPT to Markdown to export conversations; Keyboard Maestro to automate repetitive prompt submissions; and Python scripts to split and format text. These details come from Swayne’s project description as summarized by BGR’s July 2023 report, not from an independent technical audit.
Rank #2
The workflow reflects a basic constraint of long-form chatbot writing: a model produces text in bounded interactions, while a novel needs persistent structure and continuity. Swayne reportedly ran into shrinking maximum chat lengths, unexplained errors and shared conversations that crashed when they became too long. Exporting, dividing and assembling the output helped manage the volume, but it could not guarantee that facts, character knowledge or plot threads stayed consistent across hundreds of pages.
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| It can show | It cannot show |
|---|---|
| A chatbot can generate a large volume of fluent fantasy prose. | That it has access to Martin’s private outline or intended ending. |
| Prompts and published story details can guide a continuation using familiar places, names and genre conventions. | That a plausible scene reflects Martin’s narrative judgment or character plans. |
| Automation and scripts can help export and organize many generated passages. | That the result is a coherent, revised, publishable novel—or canon. |
| Fans can make alternative continuations for curiosity or personal enjoyment. | That one generated version predicts what Martin will eventually write. |
“Sounds like fantasy” and “is a convincing continuation” are different standards. A serious evaluation would look beyond sentence-level fluency: Do characters act on motives established in the books? Do they know only what they could know? Do alliances, injuries and timelines remain stable? Do chapters change the story in purposeful ways, and do the two volumes build toward consequences rather than merely add events? A polished excerpt cannot answer those questions for an entire manuscript.
Rank #3
Long generated projects can drift into generic phrasing, repeat information, give characters convenient knowledge, or solve conflicts through unearned coincidences and alliances. They can also accumulate battles and revelations without giving them meaningful aftermath. The result depends heavily on prompts and supplied assumptions; another model or a different set of instructions could produce a very different ending. Public fan theories can shape a continuation without becoming confirmed authorial plans.
Prediction, adaptation or invention?
An AI continuation might draw on published plot details, public interviews, preview material, fan theories and the instructions given by its user. That mixture can produce something that feels plausible to a reader. Plausibility is not privileged access.
Rank #4
- Three great storylines weave through the books
- Charting the civil war for control of the Seven Kingdoms
- The defence of the towering Wall of ice in the uttermost north against the unearthly threat of the Others
- Across the Narrow Sea the rise to power of Daenerys Targaryen and the last live dragons in the world
- Prediction tries to infer what Martin may write. A generated story can be interpreted as a prediction, but there is no evidence that Swayne’s text reliably forecasts Martin’s plans.
- Adaptation reshapes known material into a new form.
- Invention creates a new continuation without verified access to the author’s unpublished decisions. Swayne’s project is best understood in this category, shaped by its prompts and source material.
That distinction matters because the generated files do not reveal the official ending, settle unresolved plot questions or change what counts as canon. Calling them “the real final books” would be misleading; “AI-generated fan fiction” or “an unofficial continuation” is more accurate.
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Copyright and the limits of what is known
The project raises questions about using a copyrighted fictional world and characters to create an unauthorized continuation, particularly when that continuation concerns novels that remain unpublished and could have commercial value. An original passage featuring familiar characters may still raise derivative-work concerns; reproducing passages from the published books presents a separate issue. Selling a work or presenting it as official can increase practical and legal exposure. AI assistance does not, by itself, settle whether a particular work is lawful.
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- The ultimate collector's item for fans of the epic fantasy series that inspired HBO's Game of Thrones --a boxed set featuring gorgeous leather-cloth-bound editions of the first five novels! An immersive entertainment experience unlike any other, A Song of Ice and Fire has earned George R. R. Martin--dubbed "the American Tolkien" by Time magazine--international acclaim and millions of loyal readers.
- Now the monumental saga gets the royal treatment it deserves, with each book wrapped in bound leather-cloth covers and packaged together in an elegant display case. This one-of-a-kind boxed set includes: A GAME OF THRONES A CLASH OF KINGS A STORM OF SWORDS A FEAST FOR CROWS A DANCE WITH DRAGONS "One of the best series in the history of fantasy."-- Los Angeles Times Winter is coming.
- st of the fiefdoms that owe allegiance to King Robert Baratheon in far-off King's Landing. There Eddard Stark of Winterfell rules in Robert's name. There his family dwells in peace and comfort: his proud wife, Catelyn; his sons Robb, Brandon, and Rickon; his daughters Sansa and Arya; and his bastard son, Jon Snow.
- Far to the north, behind the towering Wall, lie savage Wildings and worse--unnatural things relegated to myth during the centuries-long summer, but proving all too real and all too deadly in the turning of the season. Yet a more immediate threat lurks to the south, where Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, has died under mysterious circumstances.
- Now Robert is riding north to Winterfell, bringing his queen, the lovely but cold Cersei, his son, the cruel, vainglorious Prince Joffrey, and the queen's brothers Jaime and Tyrion of the powerful and wealthy House Lannister--the first a swordsman without equal, the second a dwarf whose stunted stature belies a brilliant mind. All are heading for Winterfell and a fateful encounter that will change the course of kingdoms.
In 2023, the Authors Guild’s complaint against OpenAI and Microsoft cited Swayne’s project as an example in its arguments about generative AI and copyrighted books. A complaint is a party’s legal argument, not a court finding that this specific fan project infringed copyright. Legal analysis can depend on the jurisdiction, how much protected expression was used, the purpose and distribution of the work, commercial use and substantial similarity. This is not legal advice.
Martin’s official site has also stated that his office does not willingly work with AI generative artists in connection with its projects. That statement concerns generative art; it should not be inflated into a claim about every use of AI in writing or fan communities. Martin and other authors’ participation in broader disputes over generative AI likewise does not decide the legal status of Swayne’s project.
What the project means for readers
Swayne’s effort is notable as a demonstration of the mechanics and limits of generating a very long continuation: it took repeated prompting, exporting and text processing, and it faced length and context problems. It does not make an unpublished Martin novel available, offer an authoritative ending or establish that AI can reproduce the judgment required to carry a complex series through to its conclusion.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesReaders who encounter the files should treat them as unofficial fan work, not a substitute for the books Martin may publish. The official series still ends, for now, with A Dance with Dragons. Whether Martin will complete the two planned novels remains an open question; ChatGPT cannot answer it on his behalf.
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