Recently, I came upon a beautiful but an intriguing qoute shared online, a paragraph from Madeline L’Engle’s exquisite novel, Walking on Water.

The phrase underlined how readers are actually active participants in any story, bringing their own imaginations to life within the pages. It made me wonder: What happens to this beautiful encounter when AI acts as both writer and reader?

Traditionally, a narrative is created by two people: the writer, who imagines, crafts, and shapes, and the reader, who reconstructs, imagines, and interprets. And until now, it has been an unspoken contract that is both intimate and universal. We didnt think much about it.

AI alters the game.

Imagine a story written by a writer in collaboration with AI, with algorithms suggesting metaphors, refining phrases, or even spinning complete narrative arcs. Consider an AI reader who analyzes texts based on pattern recognition, prediction, and statistical insight rather than emotional intuition. What happens to creativity when AI simultaneously tells stories and interprets them?

Changing the Balance of Creativity

Human readers invest emotionally in stories, drawing on their memories and experiences to bring them to life. AI, on the other hand, reads in a different way. It “understands” through data sets, learns through formulas, and guesses meaning statistically. This transforms interpretation from a subjective dance into a quantitative computation.

Meanwhile, when AI writes, the authorship extends beyond the individual. Creativity becomes collective—not just shared among humans but mediated through machines. What arises is fluid authorship, with humans and artificial intelligence combining to create hybrid storytelling. But does this weaken or increase the creative spark?

The New Narrative Triangle

The traditional model—writer to reader—extends into a triangle:

Writer ↔ AI (Co-Writer): The AI co-writer impacts creative decisions, providing options the writer may not have considered. This transforms solitary creation into collaborative discovery.

The AI co-reader enhances the reading experience by providing insights, analyzing structure, and personalizing content based on the reader’s mood or history, making it more engaging and personalized.

This triangle interplay challenges established notions of authorship and readership. Stories can evolve, adapt, and become infinitely adaptable, tailored to each individual reader.

What is lost and gained?

For this, we risk losing the personal, unpredictable nature of human interpretation. Because the subtleties of a story perceived through personal suffering or delight cannot be quantified. Yet, we get a new level of storytelling. This is one that is fluid, interactive, and ever-changing.

In this sense, AI is not replacing humans in the narrative equation. It can only enhance it by adding new levels, alternate views, and possibilities. Stories could become infinitely adaptable, changed by each reader’s engagement with the AI, resulting in a narrative experience that is uniquely theirs. A kind of create your own story/interpretation situation.

The Future: Shared Storytelling

I think this is en exciting venture. We are at the start of a new creative landscape. Perhaps we are even creating something unprecedented. Perhaps it isn’t about losing authorship or readership, but about exploring new means of creative expression.

Ultimately, narrative remains intrinsically human. AI may write and read, but the meaning and emotion remain ours.