59. AI AND THE DEATH OF CREATIVE WRITING? NOT SO FAST

For as long as humans have told stories, every new technology has been accused of killing creativity. The printing press, the typewriter, photography, film, the internet — each innovation sparked anxiety about the decline of human imagination. Today, the worry has a new target: artificial intelligence. With AI models capable of drafting poems, novels, essays and scripts at astonishing speed, many wonder if creative writing as an art form is on life support. But while AI undoubtedly changes the landscape, reports of the death of creative writing are premature, and ultimately misunderstand what creativity is.

Living the experience

The fear is understandable. AI-generated writing has become impressively coherent, stylistically adaptable and increasingly capable of mimicking the rhythms and ideas traditionally attributed to human authors. If a model can write a decent short story in a few seconds, does that devalue the years a human writer spends honing their craft? Some worry that publishers will choose cheaper, faster AI-generated manuscripts. Others fear a flood of synthetic content will drown out original voices.

Yet creative writing has never been merely about producing text. It's about the lived experience behind the words: the emotional resonance, individual perspective and ineffable human weirdness that no model trained only on past data can authentically replicate. AI can imitate patterns, but it cannot feel. It can remix themes, but it cannot genuinely wrestle with grief, longing, desire or existential conflict. It can generate stories, but it cannot need to tell them. Creativity isn't just output; it's intention.

A useful tool

Paradoxically, AI's rise may push human writers to embrace precisely those qualities that make their voices unique. As formulaic writing becomes easier for machines, authentic writing that is deeply personal, stylistically daring and emotionally unpredictable becomes more valuable, narratives that feel alive, risky or revelatory in ways no dataset can produce.

Moreover, many writers are beginning to treat AI not as a threat but as a tool. Just as photographers adopted Photoshop or filmmakers adopted CGI, writers can use AI for brainstorming, rough drafting, breaking creative blocks or exploring new forms. Some compare it to having an endlessly patient collaborator, one who can propose plot twists at 2 a.m. or rephrase a stubborn sentence from ten different angles. In this sense, AI becomes a creative accelerant, not a replacement.

Redefining creativity

The publishing world will adapt, too. As with every technological shift, new norms will emerge around authorship, originality and disclosure. We may see hybrid works, AI-assisted literature or even new genres defined by the interplay between human and machine creativity. But the core of creative writing, that intrinsic desire to communicate something truthful, surprising or meaningful, remains profoundly human.

AI will transform creative writing, just as previous technologies did. But transformation is not death. If anything, it challenges writers to redefine what creativity means in an age where generating text is effortless. The value of writing will depend less on how quickly or flawlessly it can be produced, and more on why it exists at all. In the end, stories survive not because of the tools used to make them, but because of the humans who need to tell and share them. AI may write stories but only we can make them matter.

- Chris