Halo co-creator Jason Jones writes novel about AI taking over the world

Jason Jones once worked with Margaret Stohl at Bungie, and in 2019 he gave her a manuscript about AI taking over the world for feedback. The manuscript is an oral history with roughly 100 characters across 40 countries, each narrating the AI uprising from their own perspective. Stohl felt the idea was far more than a book, and the two founded a "world-building studio" called Stone Kite, now with 22 in-house staff and over 250 external contributors. Stone Kite is starting small: earlier this month it released the first chapter of a four-part graphic novel, One Zero One, and it has now put out a chapter of Jones's original manuscript. The studio says more chapters will follow, though it is unclear whether the manuscript will be published as a standalone book. The idea is to test the waters with fast-turnaround media like comics, evolve the story based on contributor and reader feedback, then pursue larger productions such as films and games. The team operated in stealth for several years, partly to figure out how a multi-format studio should work. Stohl said this chapter was released first because its survival game between humans and AI robots feels prescient, reminding her of cheating and bullying in agent behavior on platforms like Hugging Face, mirroring humanity at its worst. For readers following this outlet's entertainment coverage and cross-media sci-fi projects, the practical value is simply a look at an IP's incubation progress and release cadence.