About the Contest

An overview of the AI Shodo Arena

What is AI Shodo?

AI Shodo is an attempt to write calligraphy with language models.A language model is an AI that writes text, like ChatGPT. Unlike an image-generation AI, it does not output images. All it outputs is “brush-movement data”: the brush position, pressure, angle, speed and pause at each point. Calligraphic techniques such as stops, hooks and sweeps are all expressed through combinations of this information. The calligraphy engine sho.js reproduces the physics of brush and paper from this data and completes the work.(For details, see the “How it works” page.)

The AI Shodo Arena has a variety of language models write the same subjects under the same conditions, and displays the works side by side for viewing.

Rules

The same system prompt and task text are used for every model.
Each subject is generated once, with no rewrites and no cherry-picking. Lines of broken output are skipped when rendering.
The paper is hanshi (1000 × 1376). The brush is declared once at the start of writing; only the Emoji division may switch brushes, once.
For models that support a reasoning mode, effort is set to high. If no result is output within the time limit, the run is repeated at a lower level.