Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, just gave the world a glimpse of a new ChatGPT model that’s supposedly great at creative writing. In a post on X, he shared a “metafictional short story” written entirely by AI, claiming it was the first time he had been “really struck” by something written by a machine.
At first glance, this might sound impressive. But while AI is getting better at mimicking human writing, it’s still just that—a mimicry. No matter how sophisticated the technology becomes, AI will never replace human writers because it lacks the very things that make writing worth reading: emotion, personal experience, and true creativity.
Great writing isn’t just about structuring sentences or choosing the right words. It’s about conveying emotions and drawing from lived experiences. When we write, we offer unique perspectives that only a human can bring. But AI like ChatGPT doesn’t feel heartbreak when writing about loss.
It doesn’t experience nostalgia when reminiscing about childhood. AI doesn’t know what it’s like to fall in love, to struggle, to dream, or to fear failure. It can only simulate these emotions based on the vast collection of human-written text on which it has been trained. And that’s the problem. None of what it writes is real.
No matter how convincing ChatGPT’s AI-generated writing may seem, it will always be a hollow imitation of human creativity. The words might flow well, but they lack soul, purpose, and meaning. The true things that make stories resonate.
Part of the reason we connect with characters in stories so much is because we can feel the emotion that the writers put into them. We can empathize with their struggles because we’re struggling with issues of our own, perhaps even the same ones as the characters.
ChatGPT’s writing might be useful for generic blog posts, summaries, or marketing copy, but it won’t ever fully replace novelists, poets, journalists, or screenwriters. The world doesn’t need more technically proficient but emotionally empty writing — we already have plenty of that.
What readers really connect with is raw, unfiltered human expression. And that is something AI simply cannot provide, no matter how much it has been trained to provide it. Am I scared about how companies will approach AI and how they’ll replace writers with it? Absolutely.
But do I believe AI will ever write the next great novel, pen an award-winning screenplay, or craft a poem that brings someone to tears? No, it’s very unlikely. Because those things require human emotion. And that is something that no algorithm can replicate.
