Storytelling is an art as old of humanity itself. Back in the day, back before even Joe Biden was in short trousers, it was a way for the earliest societies to pass information on.

The better the storytelling, the more memorable the information, and the more likely that group were going to remember where the woolly mammoth carcass could be found, or the best cave to sleep in for the night.

Storytelling, too, has helped to serve as a guide for the early movement of humankind. Researchers at the Sorbonne found similar versions of the ‘Cosmic Hunt’ myth in different parts of the world, from ancient Greece to Siberia to the Iroquois of North East America.

In each telling, a bear or similar creature is pursued by hunters, leaps into the sky and becomes the ‘Great Bear’ constellation. By tracking the variation of the story, researchers were able to plot out our earliest migrations.

Yet today, as with many creative pursuits, storytelling finds itself under threat from the development of AI. Artificial Intelligence has all sorts of potential to transform how we live – Tony Blair, for example, has been advocating its use to the new Labour government. But in the creative arts, its role is a lot more complicated and controversial. Writers and artists are among those who worry their livelihoods are at risk, should the use of AI become the norm.

This week, researchers at University College London published a paper, looking at the effects of AI on storytelling.

Their experiment asked participants to write a story on a given theme: a third were offered no help, a third were offered a starting idea created by ChatGPT and a third were offered five ChatGPT ideas to choose from.

The results were that those who had help from ChatGPT produced better stories.

However, the conclusions showed that AI specifically helped the weaker writers: its use did not ‘supercharge’ the already creative participants to produce even better work. The research also found that the AI generated storylines had less variety: ‘better’, perhaps, but in a similar way.

The use of AI is already a big talking point in creative circles. For some people, this research reinforces their belief that true creativity is beyond AI and should be avoided at all costs.

For others, there remain benefits from AI without compromising creativity: some writers, for example, are already using it for research, if not for writing.

For me, using AI for ideas generation doesn’t feel that different to plagiarism: it might make your story ‘better’, but at the cost of your authenticity.

If storytelling is about capturing the human experience, then gaming the system feels an odd way to leave your mark.