The first full length novel written by a brand using ChatGPT.

The X-Treme Watermelon Smoothie hit Smoothie King stores this (past) summer for a limited edition run. With watermelon being a classic summer staple, it only made sense for Smoothie King to feed into the summertime vibes to promote the launch.

Picture this: You’re at the beach, sitting in a low-slung chair with your feet in the sand. What’s in your hands? A cold drink and, of course, the season’s hottest romance novel.

Indeed, 1 in 4 books sold in America is a romance novel. Inspired by this fact, Smoothie King launched summer’s biggest thirst trap (their X-Treme Watermelon Smoothie) by creating the first (and thirstiest) full-length novel written by a brand using ChatGPT. Our novel, A Summer Fling to the X-Treme, tells the story of a riveting love triangle between a man, a woman, and an X-Treme Watermelon Smoothie. But the problem? Our new product launch was just days away, and we had no romance novelist on staff.

So, with our idea in place, we let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting in record time. An AI-generated list of romance tropes inspired the love triangle narrative. From there, it took ChatGPT about an hour to spit out plot points and general chapter summaries that gave us an arc for the story.

It was finally time to put pen to paper. We fed ChatGPT our main plot points and had it expand on them in its typical 500-700 words at a time. This takes mere seconds to produce instead of the 40 words per minute that humans are used to, and that’s without the time staring at a blank page. Quickly, our plot points turned to whole chapters, taking just 1-2 hours per chapter and finishing a 228-page draft in less time than a human’s work week. It's pretty good, considering the average author takes two years to complete and sell a novel.

No book is ever finished without a cover, which is where Midjourney stepped in. Within 1 minute, the AI tool generated the 90s romance art of our dreams. Two minutes after that, we had selected the cover art full of The X-Treme Watermelon Smoothie hit Smoothie King stores this summer for a limited edition run. With Watermelon being a classic summer staple, it only made sense for Smoothie King to feed into the summertime vibes to promote the launch.