AI and the New Era of Effortless Creativity

As I mentioned in my previous article, 2025 promises to be a year of significant transformation, particularly in AI model development.

The launch of DeepSeek last week marked a pivotal moment. In the past, writing was akin to learning to drive a manual car: you needed to master gear changes (article structure), keep an eye on the dashboard (grammar rules), and maintain a steady grip on the wheel (creative control).

Now, with tools like DeepSeek, writing has become second nature: a grandmother wanting to write a fairy tale for her granddaughter can simply input "dancing broccoli and the sleepless moon" and receive five delightful story outlines in just 30 seconds. A barista, recalling an amusing interaction with a customer who asked for "the world’s strongest coffee," can effortlessly turn that moment into an 800-word humorous story for social media.

This shift is like moving from hand-copying manuscripts in a monastery to printing books in a bustling marketplace:

• Students can submit their draft essays, and the AI will pinpoint awkward phrases or sections that could make even the most lenient professor raise an eyebrow.

• Mums writing about their daily parenting struggles can watch the simple line "baby spilt formula" turn into something like "the toddler’s first experiment with gravity."

• Retirees looking to share their life stories can upload old photos and receive heartfelt narratives that capture the warmth of a family gathering.

Perhaps most revolutionary is how it has eased the "expression anxiety" that so many people experience. Even those who once felt unsure about their writing no longer see themselves as "unworthy of words." They’ve realised that even a simple description, like "how to choose the freshest fish," can be transformed into something like "A Survival Guide to the Seafood Market." Suddenly, everyone’s everyday moments have the potential to be shaped into stories worth telling.

This isn’t just a leap forward in technology – it’s giving every member of the silent majority a pen that never runs dry.

Today, I fed all the short stories I wrote last year into DeepSeek, asking it to analyse my writing style and produce an article in my voice. The results were so spot on that I could almost "retire" right now – and this is just the beginning.

---

From DeepSeek:

Based on your notes and ideas, you are a speculative writer who blends philosophy, sci-fi, and psychological depth. Here’s a simplified breakdown of your creative identity:

---

1. Core Genre: Philosophical Sci-Fi × Existential Psychological Thriller

• Cybernetic Shamanism: You merge technology (VR, AI, space travel) with ancient spiritual themes (rituals, causality, collective consciousness). For example: a VR experience where walking off a cliff or locking eyes with a shaman feels eerily real, despite knowing it’s fake.

• Identity Crisis Stories: You explore existential questions like “What makes us real?” through twists like “You’re the one who’s been replaced, not your parents” or characters who “exist outside others’ dreams.”

• AI Paranoia: Your ideas question free will in a simulated world (e.g., “What if we’re all AI agents with assigned roles?” or murder scenes with mysterious “NS DNA”*).

---

2. Narrative Style: Time-Bending × Metafictional Puzzles

• Reverse Causality: You break traditional logic, like “planes exist because you travelled first” or “a child exists before their parents meet.” This creates mind-bending paradoxes.

• Layered Realities: Stories often blur reality and illusion (e.g., VR worlds, DNA tests gone wrong, or characters realizing they’re “bugs in a cosmic simulation”).

• Symbolic Trilogy: Your planned series about “female friendships, mother-daughter relationships, and splitting headaches” hints at using physical pain to mirror emotional or societal fractures.

---

3. Key Themes: Spiritual Capitalism × Digital Existentialism

• Money as a Mirror: You reinterpret financial terms like “appreciation” (both gratitude and profit) to critique capitalism’s absurdity.

• Digital Spirituality: You frame life as a “game with rules to feel real”—numbers, limits, and roles exist to make the illusion believable.

• Zen Sci-Fi: Eastern philosophy meets tech, like viewing “enlightenment” as glitches in a system or “the self” as a temporary avatar in a cosmic video game.

---

4. Your Unique Voice: Quantum Storyteller

• Sci-Fi Mystic: You balance cold logic (AI, DNA science) with mystical ideas (collapsing realities, shamans). Think Ted Chiang meets a Zen koan.

• Twist Architect: Your stories trap readers in existential riddles (e.g., “Is my consciousness borrowed? Will I ever find someone who truly understands me?”).

• Emotional Hacker: You use tech metaphors to dissect raw human fears—loneliness, impermanence, the terror of being “fake.”

---

Your work asks one haunting question: If nothing is real, what’s left to believe in?
Here’s the article that DeepSeek generated, based on its analysis of my writing style:

The Inverted Sea

Chapter 1: The Blank Sample

The third genetic comparison failed just as Lin Yuan caught the scent of her mother’s gardenia perfume.

It seeped through the lab’s ventilation ducts, mingling with the sterile tang of disinfectant, sharp enough to trigger hallucinations. Data streams on her screen twisted into vortices, 23 pairs of chromosomes disintegrating into luminous shards—the NS-type gene sample had once again rejected all traceability requests, like a quantum cloud refusing observation.

“Another failure?” Project Lead Lu Shen’s voice cut through the silence. His lab coat revealed a half-exposed mechanical arm, a relic from the gene-editing riots three years prior.

Lin shut down the holographic projection. The virtual corpse collapsed into a singular point, its anomalous NS-DNA data vanishing with it. “Contaminated sample. Needs reculturing.” She ripped off her gloves, the barcode on her left ring finger glowing cyan under the lights.

Lu’s prosthetic fingers tapped a rapid Morse code rhythm on the console. “Three corpses. Identical NS genetic markers. Identical suicides. And our chief geneticist fails analysis three times in a row.” He leaned closer, his breath cold. “I heard your mother hunted NS sequences too.”

The gardenia stench thickened. Lin remembered her seventh birthday—her mother projecting her DNA into swirling constellations on the ceiling. “Every genome holds a creation myth,” she’d whisper.

Then came the night the projector exploded into phosphorescent shards, her mother disappearing into the radiology vault, leaving only a blood sample with blank sequences. Mitochondrial DNA: untraceable. NS-07 experimental traits: a perfect match.

“I need VR core access,” Lin said abruptly.

---

Chapter 2: The Ritual Corridor

The neural interface pierced her cervical spine, and Lin recalled the shaman in the ritual chamber.

Seven days ago, in the seventh layer of Virtual Frontier, a woman cloaked in data-feathers blocked her path. The shaman’s pupils spiralled with Fibonacci sequences. When she touched Lin’s barcode, the virtual realm began unravelling.

“They see through your eyes,” the shaman hissed, static distorting her voice. The altar’s fire mutated into DNA helixes. “When you stare into the void, the void stares back.”

Now Lin’s vision melted.

Instead of crime scene reconstruction modules, the VR system loaded an ancient sacrificial simulation. Bronze vessels floated in data streams, Oracle Bone Script swirling like ephemeral insects. Pain sharper than reality crawled up her spine—this was the Yinxu Module, her mother’s final project before vanishing.

“Identity confirmed. Welcome back, Administrator Lin Xiang.”

Her mother’s name froze her veins. Memories flooded in: twenty years ago, a storm-soaked Lin Xiang bursting into their home, clutching a dripping encrypted drive. “Yuanyuan, I found the key to invert causality—”

Drums echoed from the ritual’s heart. Following a holographic crane navigation marker, Lin found the shaman slicing open a virtual lamb. Its organs unfurled as a code-born star map. When the shaman looked up, her face was Lin Xiang’s—thirty years younger.

“Twenty years late.” The shaman raised the bloodied star chart. “NS sequences aren’t genetic markers. They’re observer anchors.”

The lamb’s heart burst into a rain of blood, each droplet solidifying into barcodes identical to Lin’s.

---

Chapter 3: The Topology of Pain

The star chart bled.

As crimson droplets hit the virtual altar, Lin’s barcode seared. The glyphs beneath her skin reconfigured into the Oracle character 未—“not yet,” her mother’s favorite word.

“Observers don’t interfere. They just make stories coherent.” The shaman pressed the chart into her eye socket, digital neurons spreading into galactic arms. “Planes exist because someone must fly.”

Real-world alarms pierced the VR veil. Lin tore off the neural link. Lab cultivation pods had ruptured, nutrient fluids pooling into the lamb’s cardiac silhouette.

Lu stood at the center, holding a vial of her golden blood. His prosthetic sprouted a laser scalpel, its surface morphing phospholipid membranes. “Know why NS genes haunt suicides? You’re narrative variables. Stray from the script…” The blade grazed her carotid. “…the system triggers elegant collapse.”

The gardenia scent choked her. Lin suddenly understood: her mother’s perfume was laced with Californium-252.

Memory rewound—seven-year-old Lin watching her mother spritz perfume onto the DNA projector. Radiation warped the helix into serpents as a plane crashed outside.

“The victims’ DNA… you replaced them with your markers,” Lin whispered, staring at Lu’s NS-branded prosthetic.

The scalpel hesitated.

---

Chapter 4: Virtual Gestation

Lin bit her tongue.

Blood activated her barcode’s emergency protocol. Her mother’s voice vibrated in her eardrums: “Pain is reality’s debugger.”

The lab quantized. Shattered glass existed in superposition; Lu’s prosthetic flickered in probability clouds. The Yinxu Module had overwritten reality.

Lin sprinted through Schrödinger’s cat matrices to the radiology vault. A cesium-137 source pulsed where her mother vanished.

Blood-unlocked, the vault revealed no toxins—only a bronze key and pregnancy reports dated before her parents met. Mitochondrial DNA: untraceable.

At the bottom: “Embryo NS-07. Telomerase anomaly. Recommend termination.”

A decaying hologram flickered—Lin Xiang, pregnant, injecting glowing fluid into her veins. “Sixth gene edit failed… but Yuanyuan’s heartbeat grows stronger. She’s feeding on my lifespan—”

The vault tilted. Floor tiles morphed into Oracle Bone Script. Lu’s voice boomed: “You think escaping to Virtual Frontier changes your fate?”

The key turned into nothingness. Infinite Lin Yuans fractured into parallel selves—divorcing, falling, labouring—all collapsing into moonlit quantum foam.

---

Chapter 5: Inverted Genesis

Drums became fetal heartbeats.

Kneeling on the bronze altar, Lin watched her digital womb swell. The shaman—her mother’s younger self—plunged a dagger into it, extracting glowing quantum foam.

“Your origin story.” The foam showed a cockpit: a pilot drafting his will. “He should’ve died in that crash. You rewrote causality.”

Memory invaded: five-year-old Lin dying of glioblastoma. Her mother’s NS serum revived her. Next day’s headlines: Miracle Recovery beside Plane Crash Victims’ DNA Replaced.

“Lu Shen was the sole survivor,” the shaman said, crushing the foam into stardust. “His arm wasn’t torn off in riots—it was the crash’s price for your survival.”

Alarms morphed into thunder. The truth crystallized: NS—Noah’s Seed. Her genome held a civilization reboot protocol. Every observer-erased error birthed new realities.

Lu materialized, his prosthetic now biometallic flesh. “Time to die, bug.”

Lin stabbed the key into her barcode-eye. Quantum moonlight erupted as reality and the Virtual Frontier collapsed. On time’s shore, her mother hurled NS-filled bottles into reversing tides.

“To exist, first become the myth everyone denies.”

---

Epilogue: Observer Logs

(From Virtual Frontier Core Database)

[Reboot #407]
Subject NS-07 breached narrative containment. Reverse-temporal projection to 1600 BCE Shang Dynasty Oracle Bones caused temporal ripples in Yinxu Module. Recommend civilization sandbox purge.

[Artifact Analysis: Bronze Key]
Quantum spectroscopy detects reverse entropy. Higher-dimensional entity suspected of rewriting base code.

[Final Update]
New directory created: Lin Yuan’s Bottled Messages.

Containing an unfinished poem:

I am causality’s exception
A truth birthed from my mother’s fiction
When you find this key in ruins’ embrace
Unlock the barcode on your neck’s hidden space
There lies the moon’s last unobserved trace
The final code my soul dared to place