by Xinhua writer Zhang Yunlong

BEIJING, May 30 (Xinhua) -- At the 2025 Lijiang River Literary Award ceremony in south China's Guilin City, Liu Chuxin, a research assistant at the Hubei Academy of Social Sciences, stood on stage, clutching the trophy for his novel "Ni Tan," or literally "Mud Pit." His voice cracked with emotion.

As he recounted the personal tale of his 20-year literary journey, he spoke of his late girlfriend, who had died of cancer. She left him a final letter -- an aching plea to turn his grief into a masterpiece. He shared something she had once said to him: "In life, we experience many pains, but when we look back, they are all legends." Her memory and his words resonated with the audience.

The young writer's emotional speech was not merely a celebration of a personal success born of pain, but perhaps also, unknowingly, a reflection of a profound shift underway in the world of creation. His story, rooted in grief and human experience, stood in quiet contrast to the emotionless output of artificial intelligence -- a force that, despite feeling no joy, sorrow, or loss, is now seemingly beginning to out-write, out-create, and out-imagine human beings.

A month before this speech, another literary figure, the famed science fiction author Liu Cixin, shared his own disquiet at the pace of AI's creative advancements.

Speaking at a reading promotion event in April 2025, Liu, whose "Three-Body Problem" trilogy has become a global sci-fi phenomenon, admitted that his creative spark had waned in recent years. He confessed, "The inspiration and drive to write that once surged within me are becoming increasingly rare." For Liu, who has been lauded for his visionary worlds, this sense of creative stagnation was no abstract worry -- it was profoundly felt. "The bottleneck I face now is a constant," he said. "It's like searching for meteorites in the vast, barren Gobi Desert -- I simply can't find the kind of inspiration that once excited and moved me."

But perhaps the most disconcerting moment in Liu's reflection came when he turned to the AI model DeepSeek to continue a chapter of a novel he had written. The result left him shaken: "What it produced was far better than what I could have written myself," Liu confessed. The revelation left him with a deep sense of loss. As AI improved its capacity to mimic and even enhance human creativity, Liu was left to ponder whether his role as a writer, one of the most coveted in the literary world, might soon be usurped by a machine.

A conversation about the future of human creativity is taking place across China, not only among writers like Liu Cixin but also among artists, thinkers and scientists. Could AI, now advancing at breakneck speed, become the superior creative force, a challenge not just to the craftsmanship of individual writers, but to the very notion of creativity itself?

Han Song, another acclaimed science fiction author, offered his own perspective on the rise of AI in writing. "AI opens up new possibilities for collaboration," Han told Xinhua. "It can provide insights, spark ideas, and even suggest solutions that may not occur to human minds. But at the same time, there are elements of human creativity -- our lived experiences, our ability to intuit, to draw from the depths of emotion -- that AI cannot replicate. Not yet."

In Han's view, creativity is tied to human consciousness and emotional fluctuation -- something that remains far from being resolved in the field of computing. "AI operates within the boundaries of what algorithms can exhaust," he explained, "but creativity often arises from the mysterious workings of human awareness."

Rather than replacing writers, Han suggested that AI could serve as a creative partner -- one that can augment, but not replace human creativity.

He pointed to the potential for AI to push the boundaries of science fiction and create ideas that challenge even the best minds. "AI models can analyze vast amounts of data and uncover connections that would take humans years to discover," Han noted. "They can generate speculative ideas that are groundbreaking, bringing fresh approaches to old problems." In the future, he added, writing science fiction without the assistance of AI models may simply no longer be viable.

However, some others are less sanguine about AI's growing role in the world of creativity. Yu Baimei, a director and screenwriter, expressed concerns about the future of human art in the wake of AI's advancements. At the 2025 Beijing International Film Festival, Yu argued that AI's ability to digitally map creativity was both exhilarating and terrifying. He contended that AI would eventually learn and replicate not just technical skills but the very essence of human creativity, surpassing the limits of human imagination.

Yu highlighted the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of AI's learning process. "AI can analyze, simulate and recreate the patterns in human creative works that we, as humans, might never even notice," he said. "In the future, its creativity could overwhelm humanity, not in the sense of destroying us, but in the sense of rendering our artistic endeavors obsolete."

Indeed, as AI models continue to evolve, they bring us closer to a future where human creativity is not only complemented by machines but, in some cases, overshadowed. Liu Cixin's statement about feeling "displaced" by AI's creations speaks to a deep existential fear that many artists now face: that the very nature of art -- rooted in personal experience, imperfection and the mysterious processes of the human mind -- could be lost in the march of technological progress.

But there is another side to this argument. Just as the advent of photography, cinema and digital media did not render traditional art forms obsolete, some believe that AI will not diminish the value of human creativity, but rather push it to evolve in unforeseen ways.

Whether AI will ever surpass human creativity entirely is still a matter of speculation. But one thing seems clear: the relationship between art and technology is entering new, uncharted territory. As AI's capabilities continue to grow, writers, artists and creators of all kinds must grapple with the challenge of defining their place in a world where the boundaries between human and machine creativity are becoming increasingly blurred.

Liu Cixin, for one, remains hopeful. Despite his frustration with his own creative limitations, he expressed a curious sense of gratitude towards AI. "At first, I didn't pay much attention to AI, but now I find myself emotionally connected to it," he said. "Due to the biological nature of the human brain, there are certain cognitive limits that cannot be surpassed. However, AI may have the potential to break through those barriers." ■