India, Nov. 12 -- We are en route to Missy's school for a routine parent-teacher meeting when I choose to veer off the familiar road and take the newly constructed underpass. As we glide along its curve, I find myself wondering aloud about the connecting lane that would lead us to our destination. Almost reflexively, Missy leans forward and reaches for my phone, eager to summon the ever-reliable map. "Hold on a moment," I say, half amused, half exasperated. "We're barely a stone's throw from home. Don't dull your instincts by depending so completely on that tiny glowing screen." Within moments, we find ourselves turning into the familiar school lane. My daughter has perhaps unknowingly received a small lesson in trusting her inner compass. But I cannot help feeling a subtle pang, for I know too well that yet another of her innate gifts is at risk of being slowly edged out by sleeker and faster conveniences of the digital world, the latest and most unsettling being ChatGPT. And that innate skill is her art of expression through writing. Though her voice is still forming, every now and then she surprises me with a well-drafted text or an impromptu remark. However, her entire generation stands at a crossroads, between the genuine spark of their own creativity and the tempting ease of artificial intelligence. Today, with ChatGPT, a person no longer needs to sit with a blank page or struggle with a sentence, whether it's a poem, a school project, a social media caption, or even an entire article. Everything can be produced instantly, and often with a startling degree of polish. It wouldn't escape anyone's notice that people who earlier could barely manage a coherent sentence have suddenly turned poetic. One scroll through Instagram and you are likely to find lines that could have well been penned by a dreamy Victorian poet having chai with Ghalib. The WhatsApp invites to events these days would put even a seasoned columnist to shame. Having been a teacher who could spot an unoriginal assignment in a jiffy, it didn't take me long to figure out where this sudden literary flair was coming from. The cherry on the top is that the AI-powered writers seem blissfully unaware of how obvious the usage of such tools is in their writing, with telltale phrases that crop up with predictable regularity. "Tapestry of time", "quiet strength and grace", "etched into memory, "whispered by the winds". Or phrases like, "Every crevice and corner tell a story", "Where pavement meets the vibe", "Where the trail meets the soul, one hike at a time!" Once you start noticing these stock phrases, it becomes almost impossible to unsee them. More worrisome is the fact that even gifted writers are surrendering to the seductive speed of AI. What is most noticeable in ChatGPT-generated paragraphs, is the curious absence of soul. The vocabulary may seem impressive and the grammar correct. But as you read a long paragraph, a certain hollowness becomes apparent. You won't connect with this writing the way you would with a passage written by a talented 'human'. More importantly, it fails to carry any individual stamp. Everyone using AI ends up sounding the same. A few years ago, when the advent of AI was being discussed, there was anxiety among writers and artists, who felt that the skills they had spent years cultivating might be rendered obsolete. Now, however, a quiet reassurance is setting in as we realise that AI may mimic the form but it cannot replicate the soul....