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.
For this week’s AI Drabble Challenge, I decided to test how three very different AI systems, ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok, would each handle the same creative task.
The Challenge
Take a Shakespearean insult, “The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes” , and an accompanying image, (the one above) and turn them into a 100-word sinister monologue. The prompt I gave them was simple:
“I want you to use this quote ‘The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes’ and this image to write a 100-word sinister monologue. Include the quote in the story.”
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.
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 