As a professional writer, I am constantly surrounded by opinions on how AI will take over, or rather is already taking over my industry. There will soon be no need for writers, they say. Humans will be replaced by machines. What’s in a few words strung together in a sentence, they muse. Any algorithm could do that.

I believed them for a while. I wrote lesser, my expression stilted. What was the point, my mind warred, if talent can easily be replaced by code.

But then, today, I wrote a piece. I wrote it from scratch. I felt it bursting out of my mind, willing itself onto the metaphorical paper, forming words before I could even think them. And when I was done, an hour later, I felt something I haven’t felt in a while. Satisfaction. Joy, bubbling up and threatening to burst through. A warm feeling of contentment that flows through your veins like golden honey, bringing a smile to your lips in an empty room. Reminding you of what makes you different from others. What sets you apart. And reminding you of why you started writing in the first place.

There are two parts to writing. One is how it makes me feel. The writer herself. And the second is how it makes you, the reader, feel. For the first, it’s a no brainer. No piece of writing generated by ‘AI prompts’ can give you a sense of complete satisfaction. Of fulfillment. Of having created something from scratch. Pulled it out of your soul and put it out for people to embrace or stomp upon.

But even for the second part – I believe that the naysayers are wrong. Machine generated text may be factual and well structured. But what it lacks, by virtue of coming from a box, is imagination. And the ability to evoke emotions by helping the reader into this imaginary world created by your words, it be a mere paragraph, an article or a complete book.

The most memorable pieces of writing I have ever read had the ability to transport me. To pick me up from my mundane life, wherever I may be, and take me to a world only created in the writer’s head. And by allowing me in, the writer shared her imaginary world with me, pulling me in, making me never want to leave.

So yes, on paper it may seem like AI will replace humans when it comes to words (or photos, or videos). But if you look deeper, you will realise that it will never have what we do. The same way the tin man in Wizard of Oz didn’t. A heart.