AI’s growing ability to write creatively like us

AI is no longer just generating dry, robotic text. It’s now writing compelling fiction. OpenAI’s latest model has demonstrated an ability to craft stories with depth, emotion, and narrative structure that rivals human creativity. CEO Sam Altman recently shared a short story generated by AI that was not just coherent but hauntingly resonant, sparking a wave of discussion about what this means for the future of literature.

Jeanette Winterson, a long-time advocate for technological innovation in storytelling, believes this shift is not something to fear but to embrace. She describes AI as “alternative intelligence”, suggesting that its ability to be other might be precisely what human writers need—pushing creative boundaries, offering new perspectives, and reimagining storytelling. 

According to Winterson, writing in the Guardian, AI-generated narratives could complement human creativity rather than replace it, much like early word processors transformed, rather than eliminated, authors' work.

The ethical dilemma: training AI on human creativity

However, this advancement has sparked fierce debates within the creative community. Critics argue that training AI models on copyrighted materials without explicit consent raises ethical and legal concerns. In the UK, the "Make It Fair" campaign opposes government proposals allowing AI companies to utilise copyrighted works without permission, emphasising the need to uphold copyright laws to ensure fair use and proper licensing. The literary world is seeing increasing tensions between AI developers and content creators over the source material used in AI training datasets.

The fear that AI is now too good at creative writing is compounded by concerns that some so-called authors are using it to generate entire books. This isn’t just speculation—examples are already emerging. Tim Boucher, an independent writer, used AI tools to produce 120 books over two years, each containing AI-generated images and text. 

While Boucher views this as an artistic experiment, it has sparked backlash, with accusations of plagiarism and concerns about the authenticity of AI-generated content. Others see this as the first wave of mass-produced, AI-generated fiction, flooding digital marketplaces and potentially devaluing original human storytelling.

Legal battles and the future of AI in literature

This issue has already led to legal battles. French publishers and authors have sued Meta, alleging unauthorised use of their copyrighted works to train AI models. Similarly, major publishing houses scrutinise whether AI-generated books flooding platforms like Amazon dilute the literary market. This raises key questions: Should AI-generated works be labelled as such? Who owns AI-assisted creative output? And will this technology ultimately serve or hinder literary culture?

While AI continues to evolve, its role in creative writing presents opportunities and challenges. It offers new tools for storytelling and content creation, but it also necessitates a re-evaluation of authorship, originality, and the value of human creativity in the digital age. As AI’s capabilities grow, the literary world must decide how to adapt—whether to embrace AI as a co-creator or fight to preserve wholly human storytelling. Either way, the future of literature is already being rewritten.