Candace Bushnell on why originality still beats AI

Candace Bushnell began her career as a writer at age 19, focusing on her own world in New York. When she launched the Sex and the City column in The New York Observer in 1994, she made a deliberate decision to write about things she believed could only happen in New York. However, she quickly discovered that the themes and experiences she was documenting were not unique to the city—they were happening everywhere. As she reflected in the interview, the column was essentially social anthropology, translatable to almost every major city. The turning point came around 1999 or 2000, when people in Los Angeles began sharing the column with each other. The subsequent television series, which came later, expanded the reach dramatically, though that evolution was not immediate.

Throughout her career, Bushnell has resisted the pressure to transform her success into a personal brand. She was often told that she had built a brand over 20 or 30 years, but she firmly disagreed. "I do not see myself as something inanimate," she said in the interview. "I am a human being. What I do is dedicate my time to creating, to producing something that, at least until now, even in the age of AI, only a human being can really do; and that is writing." She emphasized that she never approached herself as a marketing machine and has not put her name on buildings or product lines. Some of her books have been adapted for television, but her focus remained on the work itself and her creative expression, not on larger business ventures.

When the Sex and the City television series opportunity arose, Bushnell participated in the writing team for the first two seasons. However, when a $1 million deal to write two books came up, she chose to leave television and return to book writing—not just for financial reasons, but because that was what she truly wanted to do. She explained that books and cinema share a narrative structure with a beginning, middle, and end, whereas television requires an ongoing mechanism to keep stories moving. This difference in medium fundamentally shapes the creative process and demands different skills from the writer.

Bushnell's writing discipline is rigorous. She writes at least six hours a day, six days a week, sometimes seven, with periods extending to ten hours daily. She compared the practice to playing a musical instrument, requiring discipline, consistency, and endurance rather than waiting passively for inspiration. When developing a book, she must determine whether her characters have the depth to support a full narrative—approximately 100,000 words. This is an internal, mental process: she creates a world in her mind and then channels it onto paper, a feat that demands continuous presence in that creative space.

On the question of how to maintain originality in the age of AI, Bushnell was clear: "Creativity is about combining elements, recognizing patterns, and transforming them into something original." She acknowledged that AI might imitate her style or write something that resembles it, but such output would be limited to reproduction. As a human, she can evolve, become a better writer, think differently, and introduce new elements. She expressed confidence that human creativity, at least as of now, cannot be replaced by AI, though she noted a willingness to learn how to use AI as a tool. What distinguishes human creativity from AI is the ability to generate something truly original—not merely recombine existing patterns, but move beyond them.

Bushnell's one-woman show, True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City, came about unexpectedly during the pandemic after someone suggested she could perform such a show. The first performance was in a small theater, followed by an off-Broadway run in New York. She performed the show in Athens on April 17. Though stage performance was unfamiliar territory, it felt like a natural progression from the readings and public appearances she had given since the mid-1990s. Interestingly, she finds performing on stage easier than writing a book—a paradox she highlighted, as most people assume the reverse. The show functions as a more direct, almost confessional version of her journey, addressing questions audiences had long asked about Sex and the City: whether she had three female friends like those on the show, whether she had a wardrobe like Carrie Bradshaw's, and how she began writing the column.