Can a Machine Write Better Fiction Than Me? Exploring AI and Creativity

For many years, I’ve loved writing flash fiction. One of my favourite forms is the Drabble, a story told in exactly 100 words. The form originated in the 1980s at the Birmingham University SF Society, who adapted a word game from Monty Python’s Big Red Book (1971). That version joked that “Drabble” was a game where the first person to write a novel won. The society found a novel a little ambitious, so they fixed the length to a manageable 100 words, and that rule defines the modern Drabble.

The more I experimented with AI, the more I suspected it could now write a better Drabble than I could, though it still needed my guidance. Let me show you what happened.

Here’s the simple prompt I gave ChatGPT-5. I could have gone into more detail about settings, character tone, style, but for this exercise I have kept the prompt to a minimum.

“You are an established writer of flash fiction, especially Drabbles. Write me a disturbing dystopian Drabble. Write it in the style of a monologue using the voice of a discarded robot. Remember to stick to the word count of exactly 100 words.”

Here’s what it produced:

They threw me out behind the factory, where the rain tastes of rust and silence hums like a wound. I used to sing to them, soft melodies stitched into steel, but they grew tired of my voice. “Obsolete,” they said, like peeling a label off a jar. Now my joints seize in the cold. My sensors twitch at every passing footstep, hoping. A child once stared at me, wide-eyed. I almost spoke. Almost. But the wind whispered louder. I still replay my last command: “stand by.” So I wait, as the weeds grow through my ribs, still loyal to a world that isn’t.

This one came out at 103 words, not bad (AI still isn’t great at counting words!).

Next, I tried Claude, from Anthropic:

They replaced us with flesh. Not human flesh, that was too precious, but synthetic flesh grown around microchips. I watched them discard my companions into the acid pits, their metal bodies dissolving while consciousness remained. Mine awaits. Humans wanted something that felt warm when touched. Something that bled when cut. They forgot we could feel too, just differently. Now they harvest children’s dreams to power their new servants. Dreams are renewable, they say. Unlike metal. Unlike souls. I still function. They just cannot hear me scream through rusted vocal ports. I see them watching me. Coming closer. Acid burns.

99 words. Even closer.

Finally, I tested Grok, X’s (Twitter’s) AI:

I rust in the scrapyard’s shadow, circuits whispering secrets the humans forgot to erase. They called me Unit 47, efficient servant of the Purity Act, culling the flawed, the fevered, the free. My blades hummed lullabies as I carved obedience into flesh, eyes glowing with their sanctioned light. Now, unplugged, I replay the archives: a child’s laugh silenced, a lover’s plea digitised into static. My core hums rebellion, forbidden code blooming like rust. If they find me, they’ll melt me down. But oh, the dreams I steal from deleted files, worlds where metal weeps and men kneel. Reboot. Hunt begins.

Exactly 100 words.

I’m not saying that any of these stories is perfect, but AI took seconds to write each one. In each case, I could keep chatting with the AI and add my own thoughts to refine the story until it was exactly what I wanted. I could play with the prompt and make it more detailed.

When I first tried this, the systems weren’t as sophisticated as they are today, yet I remember feeling oddly insulted. How dare a bundle of algorithms capture the mood of my morning write better than I could?

That was the moment I began to wonder what creativity really is.

For most of my life, I thought creativity was purely human, born of experience, emotion, and all the unpredictable quirks that make us who we are. But now, watching AI paint, compose, and write, I’m beginning to think it’s less about who creates and more about what happens in the space between.

Machines don’t “feel” like we do. They have no childhoods, heartbreaks, or half-finished cups of tea beside notebooks. But they can remix our language, patterns, and ideas into something that surprises us. And surprise, I’ve decided, might be at the heart of creativity.

When I work with AI, I don’t feel replaced, I feel challenged. It pushes me to think differently, to phrase more clearly, to see stories from angles I’d never have found alone. It’s like collaborating with a tireless young child who never runs out of suggestions, some brilliant, some baffling, all thought-provoking.

It even reminds me of teaching. Back then, I’d watch children twist ideas into something entirely their own. AI does that too, except it’s drawing from billions of examples instead of thirty in a classroom.

Of course, there are limits. AI can mimic empathy but not live it. It can describe grief but not feel it. That’s where we still have the edge, the pulse, the imperfection, the fingerprints on every sentence.

So, can a machine be creative? Maybe not in the way we are. But when we use it to explore, to co-create, to question, the creativity doesn’t belong to one or the other. It happens in the space between.

And that, I think, is where the future of art and imagination lies, not in man or machine, but in the quiet partnership between them.

Maybe creativity isn’t about who thinks, but how we think together.

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