AI AND CREATIVITY IN WRITING
For sometime now I have been bothered about my own writing abilities. After authoring sixbooks I sat down to evaluate what went wrong suddenly and why this doubt whether I could still meet the standards set in the space by Artificial Intelligence. Everyone seemed to become a writer par excellence and with a prodigious output. The social media is now replete with any number of blogs and when I go through them I have to admit that I find myself inadequate. Today I summoned up enough courage to write, wondering whether I could finish what I started with. What stirred my introspection was two articles which appeared in The Times of India over the last ten days-
How do we spot AI slop? Lessons from the Granta controversy
Are Human+ AI Cowritten Novels The Future?
I reproduce some passages from the articles for they seek to explain what the presence of AI means to the writing community-
‘On X a user shared the very popular blog titled ‘ The quiet grief of adult friendship’ noting that it was one of the most beautiful articles she had read in awhile that hits hard. A few hours later Max Spero of Pangram Labs ( one of the leading AI-detection companies) shared a screen shot suggesting that this profound article was 100% AI generated. And this was not a singular incident.
There were claims about AI usage by some of the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, especially the work of writer Jamir Nazir from TRinidad and Tobago. Some experts, critics and Internet sleuths found plenty of markers of AI writing.
At the crux of the everyone of these unmaskings is a simple fact: it was first caught by trained eye and corroborated by an algorithm. The mild irony is just the trained eye rarely belongs to a veteran gatekeeper. Instead it belongs to someone who is chronically online who has read to much of ChatGPT output.
Why I think this is relevant is because we have to live with the fact that the future belongs to AI. But what frightens me is that our ability to create on our own is being challenged and in the days to come more and more of this bound to happen.
‘People are wondering whether one day an AI generated novel would get the prize for literature.’
I do not nurture any grouse in this issue. In this era of AI practically everything is getting automated and this is welcome, lessening the burden of repetitive tasks and providing a new and alternate solutions in faster and more efficient ways. Here the human intervention coupled with applications of AI will go a long way and it is possible to co-create.
But my problem is about originality and creativity in writing. In our quest to preserve human creativity, we should not be reduced to judging and accusations regarding the end product. When to use AI and when not is a balance that should guide AI writing in the days to come. What is perfect balance is something the writer should decide so that it does not come at the cost of one’s own creativity.
For me AI is just a tool a physical entity giving form to what is essentially you- your soul. In the foreseeable future I can envisage myself sitting in front of my computer and writing and when I find myself stuck for expression I will turn to AI. So in no sense will I compromise my integrity as a writer, meaning the soul is essentially me. But I have been satisfied with the work I have done in each of my books for I have expressed myself without any external interventions.
In her essay ‘Why I Write’,Joan Didion said she wrote entirely to find out what she was thinking. Outsource that and you have saved time, but skipped the only part that mattered. A detector cannot save culture on its own. But it can buy us the time to remember what we are protecting, and why.
A cousin of mine visited me somedays ago and the conversations veered of to AI and writing. And he had this to say “With your writing abilities you should be using ChatGPT. The outcome will be tremendous and you will love it” when I replied that I am averse to use any external aid to boost my creativity, he said “Why don’t you try”.
Now looking back at that conversation and my subsequent efforts at using ChatGPT as intervention. I thought to myself why not. My only fear is that in the process of churning out AI aided writing I should not become a slave to the very thing to which I had turned for a slight nudge. I cannot compromise on my integrity as a writer. The Soul will be mine.
Lastly I end with a disclaimer that though you may accuse me of plagiarism for quoting from the articles in TOI, you cannot suspect me of using AI in writing this blog. May be in future I will.
But I should confess the image to this blog has been generated through ChatGPT. So you see where the balance comes in. I could never have created such an image. But the most meaningful message are at the bottom portion-
AI won’t replace writers but writers who use AI may replace those who don’t
The future of writing is collaborative between human imagination and artificial intelligence
