What Does The AI Debate Tell Us About Creativity In Storytelling?

Anyone looking for an idea today often turns to AI first. A few seconds later, they’ve got ten suggestions. Nine of them are rather dull. But sometimes one of them gives us an idea we hadn’t thought of before.

This almost automatically raises the question: Is this even creative? After all, AI is “merely” recombining existing content. But what if this very observation reveals something fundamental about creativity itself?

The Myth of The Creative Spark

We like to think of creativity as a kind of creative spark—a thought that suddenly pops into our heads and has never been thought of before. That would be nice.

Anyone who has ever worked on a campaign, a piece of writing, or a story knows that it almost never works that way. More often than not, there’s already something there: a draft, a sentence that stuck with you, an observation, or a thought from a conversation. What seems insignificant at first can later become an idea in a completely different context.

Even one of the world’s most famous advertising slogans has a story behind it. In 1988, when Dan Wieden was looking for a unifying tagline for a Nike campaign, he recalled the last words of Gary Gilmore, who had been sentenced to death: “Let’s do it.” Wieden turned it into “Just Do It,” transforming those somber words into a motivational call to action.

Creativity, then, rarely starts from scratch. We take existing ideas, place them in new contexts, rework them, and develop them further. Originality often means connecting familiar elements in new ways.

Has It All Been Done Before?

This principle is not new. In the arts, engaging with the works of others is not the exception, but rather the rule. Composers such as Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven, for example, maintained extensive collections of works by other composers, from which they drew inspiration for their own work. In doing so, they took musical forms, compositional techniques, and ideas, altered them, and developed them further.

In film, such influences can often be observed even more clearly. Quentin Tarantino, for example, makes no secret of the fact that his films are influenced by numerous other works. In Kill Bill, he draws on motifs, visual language and stylistic elements from the 1973 Japanese revenge film Lady Snowblood, combining them with Western and martial arts cinema to create something entirely his own. This is precisely how he developed a cinematic language that is now unmistakably associated with his name.

But the same is true of entire narrative patterns. The Lion King, for example, has striking parallels with Shakespeare’s Hamlet: a prince loses his father, whose brother takes over the throne, and must ultimately confront his past. Nevertheless, we don’t simply see Simba as a furry Hamlet.

Such traces can be found everywhere: motifs are taken up, styles are altered, and techniques are refined. Even those who deliberately break with existing conventions still build on them. After all, you can only play with an expectation if it already exists.

So, Is AI Creative Too?

And this is exactly where the AI debate gets interesting. After all, AI follows the same logic in one crucial respect: it draws on existing patterns and relationships and uses them to generate new combinations. In doing so, it resembles human creativity precisely where it is often accused of “merely” combining things.

But is that enough to call it creativity? An AI can generate new combinations, but it has no experience of its own from which to judge whether an idea is interesting, relevant, or even worth telling.

This difference is particularly evident in storytelling. The founding of a company can be told as a success story—or as a story about the three failed attempts that preceded it. The key is which elements we choose to include or omit, and what perspective we take. Which idea is worth pursuing? Which one works for a specific audience, a specific moment, and a specific context?

These decisions are still made by people, drawing on all their experience, sense of responsibility, and judgment.

Why AI Makes a Good Sparring Partner

That is why AI becomes particularly interesting when we interact with it. Not because it does the work for us, but because it keeps giving us material to respond to. What matters, then, is what emerges in the process.

In practice, it might look like this: We ask for suggestions for five possible story hooks. Four of them are predictable. One doesn’t really fit—it’s too simplistic, too contrived, or off-topic. But that’s exactly the one that moves us forward. Sometimes because it immediately makes clear what we don’t want to tell. And sometimes because it puts us on a completely new track we hadn’t considered.

That is why AI can be particularly interesting in the creative process when we don’t treat its output as a finished solution:

• when a suggestion sparks disagreement and, as a result, makes our own position clearer,
• when an unexpected combination opens up a new perspective,
• when several options reveal which direction doesn’t work,
• or when an idea becomes the starting point for something that has almost nothing to do with the original proposal.

That is precisely where the true value of AI as a sparring partner lies—not as a source of ready-made ideas, but as a source of friction.

Where Does Inspiration End and Copying Begin?

But there is another reason not to simply adopt AI’s suggestions. The line between a new combination and mere reproduction is not always clear-cut with AI. What appears to be a new suggestion may, in some cases, turn out to be surprisingly close to an existing template.

In the current dispute over the “NEINhorn,” for example, Carlsen Verlag accuses OpenAI of using ChatGPT to reproduce key elements of its books—including illustrations that are nearly identical to the originals—in response to specific requests. The case shows that AI does not always create something new from existing material, but can sometimes remain very close to what already exists.

This makes it all the more important to view AI output as a starting point rather than a final result. Selection, evaluation, and further development remain our responsibility.

A Fresh Look at Creativity

Perhaps AI is changing not only what we create, but also how we think about creativity itself. If originality rarely arises out of thin air anyway, then the question of what actually counts as creativity shifts as well. It’s not just the first idea that matters, but what we make of what’s already there.

“Perhaps AI is changing not only what we create, but also how we think about creativity itself.”


Gregor Krüger-Pammin – Trainee at Mashup Communications

This becomes particularly evident when AI is involved. What matters isn’t simply letting it do its thing, but rather what happens when its suggestions interact with our own thoughts. Something new emerges not so much on either side, but in the interaction between them.

And perhaps that is precisely the most fascinating insight to emerge from the AI debate: not that machines have suddenly become creative, but that they are prompting us to take a closer look at how creativity actually arises.

Mini-FAQ: AI and Creativity in Storytelling

What Does AI Tell Us About Creativity?
AI reveals that new things often emerge by connecting, modifying, and developing what already exists.

How exactly can AI help with storytelling?
Often, by sparking our own thinking. A suggestion can open up a new perspective, provoke disagreement, or give us an idea that we might not have come up with on our own.

How can I use AI without simply adopting its ideas?
Because the output is the beginning, not the end. Questions that can help: What works about this? What’s off? What’s missing? What happens if you combine two suggestions or deliberately turn one on its head? That way, an answer becomes material for your own work rather than the finished product.

Where is the line between inspiration and copying?
It’s not always possible to draw a clear line. For the creative process, it’s therefore worth asking: What have I added myself? A new perspective, a different context, a surprising connection?

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