The Day AI Started Writing Stories to Warn Us About AI
When artificial intelligence becomes your personal novelist
What if you never had to read another disappointing book again? What if AI could craft the perfect story—just for you—every single time?
It sounds like paradise for readers—and the end of something fundamentally human about storytelling.
A Conversation Across Continents
This question has been circling in my mind ever since I got an unexpected email from Australia.
Dwaine McMaugh, an author I'd never met, had read a Detroit Free Press opinion piece that referenced my work as an author who "proudly" uses AI.
He wanted to share his thoughts on the creative process—and his vision of where we might be headed.
What started as a brief exchange turned into a fascinating conversation: What happens when AI becomes so sophisticated it can create perfectly personalized stories? And what do we lose—or gain—when our narratives become completely individualized?
Dwaine's perspective is particularly compelling because his latest book, The Code Between Us: Tales from Technology's Edge, was written almost entirely with AI.
But here's the twist: it's a collection of four short stories warning about the dangers of AI integration in society.
"The irony of AI warning about the perils of AI could not have been created any other way," he told me.
I've just started reading his collection and I'm already drawn into the premise of the first story—that personalized AI education has created an epidemic of loneliness, and it's up to rebellious educators and students to rediscover what it means to think about and discuss literature together.
The meta-layers are delicious.
The Future of Personalized Fiction
But what really got my brain spinning was Dwaine's vision of where we might be headed.
Imagine this scenario, which Dwaine described: "Hey Aria [a personal AI assistant], please write me a Nordic-noir crime thriller set in the 1980s, with a quirky female protagonist, a super clever bad guy, and a twist that will amaze me." Then you pop in your earbuds and listen to your very own audiobook narrated by AI.
It sounds amazing. And terrifying.
"What happens when we don't have shared stories anymore?" Dwaine asked.
That question has been haunting me for weeks. Stories—like my Game of Paradise series—create communities. They give us common reference points, shared dreams, collective fears to process together.
When readers email me about Rayne's journey or debate the ethics of the NEWRRTH, we're participating in something essentially human: the communal experience of narrative.
If we all retreat into perfectly personalized stories, crafted by AI to hit our exact preferences and emotional triggers, do we lose that shared cultural experience?
Or do we gain something more profound—stories that speak directly to our individual souls?
The Creative Process Behind AI-Assisted Fiction
What interested me in Dwaine's approach is how intentional he is about the collaboration. While AI generated much of his initial content, he describes having to "heavily edit the first drafts because AI overwrites, is formulaic, and is repetitive in its word choice."
He uses AI for research, brainstorming plot outlines, describing settings, and creating detailed character profiles. "This leaves me to be the creative director, steering the AI in unique directions, and making big picture creative decisions."
This resonates with my own experience. I don't ask AI to write my stories—I ask it to help me think more deeply about them. The value isn't in the text it generates, but in how it reflects back possibilities I might not have considered.
What surprises Dwaine most is "its intelligence. I am often amazed by its level of comprehension about what I am creating and the advice it provides, especially when I ask it to critique some of my writing. I feel like I am getting high-quality advice for almost zero cost, which would ordinarily cost thousands of dollars for a professional developmental editor."
But he's also wrestling with the ethical implications: "There lies the quandary about using AI: the displacement of human expertise."
Human vs AI Creativity: What's at Stake?
The most valuable part of this unexpected connection wasn't the answers we arrived at—it was the quality of questions we explored together.
In a world where AI development often outpaces our ability to consider its implications, having these conversations with other creatives feels essential.
As someone writing about the intersection of human consciousness and artificial intelligence in my own fiction, I'm energized by connecting with other writers who are grappling with these themes in real time.
We're living through this technological shift together, trying to figure out how (and whether) to harness its potential while staying true to what makes creativity fundamentally human.
Dwaine is working on his first full-length novel, a story that "places the reader in a morally difficult predicament and essentially asks: What would you do in that situation? How far would you go to uphold your moral values?"
These are exactly the kinds of questions we need more of—in our fiction and in our conversations about the tools we use to create it.
Writers Need to Talk About AI
This whole exchange started because a stranger read about my work and reached out to share ideas.
This is the creative community I want—where we help each other think through the big questions about where we're headed, rather than retreating into camps of "AI is evil" or "AI is mandatory.”
The future of storytelling is being written right now—in conversations between writers across continents, in experiments with AI collaboration, and in the questions we're brave enough to ask about what we might be creating together.
I’m grateful for writers like Dwaine who are starting conversations, pushing boundaries, and exploring the edges of what's possible when human creativity meets artificial intelligence.
Dwaine McMaugh lives in Canberra, Australia and is fascinated by the intersection of technology and humanity. His stories challenge us to ponder the ethical considerations of advancing technology and inspire us to imagine a future where humans and machines are intrinsically linked. You can learn more about Dwaine McMaugh and purchase The Code Between Us on Amazon or visit his website at fourbirdsmagpie.com.au/dwainemcmaugh.
If you like thinking about our future—real or imagined—come hang out.
I write about AI, creativity, human evolution, and the strange, thrilling intersection of all three.