The Impact of Generative AI on Creativity: Enhancing or Speeding Up Existing Processes?

The chapter delves into a research study exploring how generative AI affects creativity, focusing on creative output rather than task completion speed. Through an online experiment assigning participants to human-only, one AI idea, or multiple AI ideas conditions, it was found that while AI assistance may slightly boost creativity for less creative writers, there is a collective decrease in novelty as stories become more similar. The chapter discusses concerns about the potential decrease in diverse and novel ideas if people heavily rely on AI for creative outputs and examines the views of both writers and evaluators on AI assistance in creative work.