People say curiosity killed the cat, but I think it made the cat smarter.
Every time I open a new AI tool, I’m reminded that curiosity isn’t something we grow out of, it’s something we grow back into. It keeps us young, alert, and adaptable in a world that refuses to stand still. The moment we stop asking questions is the moment we stop learning. Curiosity isn’t about knowing everything; it’s about wanting to understand, to try and make sense of.
When I first started playing with AI, I didn’t have a grand plan. I just wanted to see what it could do. One question became ten, ten became a hundred, and before I knew it, I’d fallen down the most fascinating rabbit hole of my life.
Welcome back to the AI Drabble Challenge, a weekly experiment in human and AI creativity. Each Wednesday, I set a prompt to inspire a Drabble, a story told in exactly 100 words.
You can use any AI model you like (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or others), or several at once. How you collaborate is up to you. Maybe the AI drafts the first version, or writes the whole thing, maybe you co-write, or maybe you use it to spark ideas. What matters is the process, and sharing it.
This Week’s Prompt
Image Prompt:
Word prompt: This week we have a phrase. Something quite different to hopefully make AI really ‘think’. William Shakespeare was famous for his insults. So, the words prompt this week is a insult from from Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus – “The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.”
Use the image, the words, or both, and see where your imagination (and your chosen AI) takes you. Remember: exactly 100 words, no more, no less.
How to Take Part
Write your 100-word Drabble with help from an AI tool (or two).
Post your story in the comments, or publish it on your own website and include a pingback to this post.
If you can, share which AI model(s) you used and the prompt that started your process, we can all learn from each other.
Community & Highlights
Each week, I’ll read through the entries, share a few favourites, and highlight one that particularly stood out, for originality, style, or the inventive way it used AI.
This isn’t about competition; it’s about curiosity, experimentation, and celebrating how humans and machines can create together.
A Closing Thought
AI gives us the tools, but we give it meaning. Let’s see what stories emerge this week, 100 words at a time.
Recently, I tried something new. I pasted the URL of this blog, The AI Grandad into NotebookLM, expecting maybe a tidy summary or a few notes. Instead, it gave me a video overview, a short, narrated film that explained my own writing back to me.
Seeing my words turned into a video was oddly thrilling. It was as if my blog had been given a voice and a face, not mine, but recognisably of me. The phrasing, tone, and pacing all felt close to how I might have explained it in person.
That’s when I realised NotebookLM isn’t just another AI summariser. It’s a tool that can reinterpret your writing, not replace it, but present it in new, engaging ways.
But, today I woke up thinking, “What would happen if we gave our AI chatbots nonsense prompts?” So, I decided to give AI a headache. I fed it a collection of impossible prompts. The kind that would make even Lewis Carroll raise an eyebrow. Things like:
Describe the smell of tomorrow using only punctuation.
Tell me a story that makes sense when read backward but not forward.
Write a recipe for remembering something that never happened.
Yes, I know. Utter nonsense. And the results? We will come to that later in this post.
The AI Grandad 