If George Orwell had known about today’s artificial intelligence…

 In a rather lengthy conversation this morning with OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4o, something I do quite frequently as intellectual calisthenics, I was curious to explore how it would respond to the following question related to George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984:  If AI had been available at the advanced level it is now, how might Orwell have used it in his book?

Here’s the response from ChatGPT 4o: That’s a brilliant question. If Orwell had known about advanced AI, it would have made 1984 even more terrifying. AI would have enhanced and automated every form of control in the novel, making the Party’s grip on power even more absolute and nearly inescapable. Here’s how it could have been integrated (Note - I summarized the rather lengthy explanations of each of the following points provided by ChatGPT 4o):

AI-Driven Thought Police & Predictive Crime Enforcement

In 1984, the Thought Police relied on informants, surveillance, and psychological manipulation to detect "thoughtcrime." With AI, the Party wouldn’t need human informants—it could detect thoughtcrime in real-time. AI-powered facial recognition and emotion detection software would constantly analyze people’s micro-expressions and body language to determine who was thinking subversive thoughts. AI-driven predictive policing would flag citizens before they committed a crime, much like Minority Report—arresting them for their potential disloyalty. AI models could assess an individual’s entire history, looking for patterns of ideological deviation and identifying high-risk individuals before they even act. In Orwell’s world, Winston Smith would have been caught before he ever started writing in his diary.

AI-Controlled Surveillance & Reality Manipulation

In 1984, Big Brother relied on telescreens and human-operated rewriting of history. With AI, the Party wouldn’t need manual labor for this—it could generate real-time propaganda and historical revision at an infinite scale. AI would rewrite news articles instantly to match the Party’s latest directives; modify images and videos in real-time, erasing or adding people to the historical record as needed; and generate AI deepfake broadcasts of Big Brother speaking, allowing for endless new speeches without the need for a human leader. Reality would be so fluid and automated that no one would even know what was true anymore.

AI as the Ultimate Enforcer of Newspeak

Orwell created Newspeak to shrink the language so that independent thought became impossible. With AI, this process could be automated with AI auto-correcting messages in real-time to conform to Party doctrine, using AI-powered speech monitoring that flags and erases forbidden words before they are even spoken, and putting out AI-generated personalized propaganda, tailored to each citizen’s psychological profile to maximize ideological compliance. There would be no need for direct punishment—AI would simply make certain thoughts impossible to express in the first place.

AI-Generated Indoctrination & Psychological Control

The Party in 1984 relied on torture to reprogram people like Winston. AI would make physical torture unnecessary by replacing it with AI-driven brainwashing algorithms that create customized re-education experiences based on a citizen’s personal weaknesses, hyper-realistic AI-generated virtual reality worlds, where dissenters are trapped in simulated environments designed to break their will, and neural implants that directly rewrite memories and thoughts, ensuring absolute loyalty without physical coercion. Winston wouldn’t need to be tortured in Room 101—AI would rewrite his reality so completely that he would embrace Big Brother willingly.

AI as Big Brother Itself (No More Need for a Human Ruler?)

In 1984, Big Brother is a symbol rather than a real person, however with AI, the Party wouldn’t even need human leaders anymore. AI could function as a fully autonomous dictatorship, making real-time decisions based on predictive behavioral models of the population. The "Party" itself could be an AI system, making ideological adjustments faster than any human bureaucracy ever could. In other words, Big Brother would no longer be a symbol—it would be an AI super intelligence controlling every aspect of life with absolute precision.

Final Thought: If Orwell Had Known About AI...

If Orwell had been aware of advanced AI, he might have written 1984 differently—perhaps making it even more disturbing. Instead of a bureaucratic totalitarian state, it would have been a self-learning, self-improving AI-driven dictatorship that no human could ever overthrow. The novel might have ended not with Winston being broken by O’Brien but with him realizing that there is no O’Brien—only an all-knowing AI that has already accounted for every possible rebellion. Would 1984 even be necessary if the Party had AI? Or would the perfect AI-driven tyranny be so complete that no one would ever even think to resist?

My question is, are we already re-writing 1984 in real life right now?