PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Is AI truly creative? Turns out creativity is in the eye of the beholder

The more we see of a creative act, the more creative we judge it to be. Researchers think these findings could change the way we design AI.

2025-05-08
(Press-News.org) What makes people think an AI system is creative? New research shows that it depends on how much they see of the creative act. The findings have implications for how we research and design creative AI systems, and they also raise fundamental questions about how we perceive creativity in other people.

‘AI is playing an increasingly large role in creative practice. Whether that means we should call it creative or not is a different question,’ says Niki Pennanen, the study’s lead author. Pennanen is researching AI systems at Aalto University and has a background in psychology. Together with other researchers at Aalto and the University of Helsinki, he did experiments to find out whether people think a robot is more creative if they see more of the creative act.

In the study, participants were initially asked to evaluate the creativity of robots based only on still life drawings they had made. They were told the robots were driven by AI, but in fact it had been programmed to reproduce drawings that the researchers had commissioned from an artist. This deception made it possible to measure people’s perception of creativity without requiring the robot to be creative, which would have introduced too much variability between the drawings.

Next, the study participants evaluated how creative the drawings were when they saw not only the final product but also a video of the drawing process –– the lines appearing on the page, but not the robot creating them. In the final stage, participants scored the drawings when they could see all three elements: the final product, the process, and the robot making the drawing.

The findings showed that the drawings were seen as more creative as more elements of the creative act were revealed. ‘The more people saw, the more creative they judged it to be,’ says Christian Guckelsberger, assistant professor of creative technologies at Aalto and the study’s senior author. ‘As far as I’m aware, we’re the first to study the effects of perceiving product, process and producer in a separate and controlled manner, not only in the context of AI but also more generally.’

The power of perception

Understanding how people assess the creativity of robots or other artificial systems is important in thinking about how to design them –– but it’s not entirely clear what the appropriate design choices would be. ‘The study suggests that revealing more about the process and producer can be conducive to people’s perception of the systems’ creativity,’ says Guckelsberger. ‘But if we added elements to make AI systems seem more creative even though the system is in fact performing the same way, we could question whether that’s actually a good thing.’ In some cases, that could be helpful –– for example, it might be a way to help people stay engaged with a co-creative system. But in other contexts, it could give people a deceptive impression of how creative an artificial system really is.

‘Our findings help address this conflict by giving us a better idea of our own human biases. This research makes them a bit more transparent, which is also important from the user’s perspective, for us to understand how a system’s design affects our perception of it,’ says Guckelsberger.

In addition to these social and design implications, the findings also have significance for research on creative AI systems. If our judgment of creativity depends on how a system is presented, then future studies should control for that factor. Likewise, existing research needs to be reevaluated in light of these findings –– comparing the creativity of different systems without accounting for differences in their presentation could have led to false conclusions.

Another intriguing question posed by this research is what it tells us about ourselves. ‘Now that we’ve found this about people’s perception of AI creativity… does it also apply to people’s perception of other people?’ asks Guckelsberger.

Does shape matter?

The researchers also carried out the experiments with two different robot designs. Their goal was to test whether people scored the creativity differently depending on the robot’s shape, because earlier work had suggested a link between shape and perceived creativity.

The team tested whether people saw different levels of creativity when a still life was drawn by a sleek arm-like robot or a more mechanistic plotter robot. Keeping the drawings consistent between the robots and from one participant to another was quite challenging. ‘I think our biggest difficulty was the physical robots themselves. We did a lot of work with the robots and the drawing process to try to keep everything identical so we could do a scientifically rigorous comparison,’ says Pennanen.

The researchers were surprised to find no significant difference in how people scored the two robots. They’re planning future work to look further into this counterintuitive result, as well as what other elements influence our perception of creativity. ‘We’re interested in doing more research about what kinds of biases affect our evaluation of creative and embodied AI systems and how those effects happen,’ says Pennanen.

The findings should also be confirmed for different artistic genres, as well as other forms of art and creative expression. To make it easier for others to replicate their work and build on it, the researchers followed strict open science practices.  As artificial systems become commonplace, understanding the factors shaping our perception of their creativity is vital for effective design –– and it may also shed some light on how we recognize creativity in humans.

A pre-print version of the paper is now available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3711939. The final publication will be available from the same link on 7 April 15:30 EET.

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Community science helps reveal population growth among SoCal’s endangered giant sea bass

2025-05-08
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Nicknamed the “king of the kelp forest,” giant sea bass are among scuba divers’ favorite characters to spot off the California Coast. But very few of these charismatic fish remain. A team led by researchers at UC Santa Barbara has conducted the first direct population estimate of this critically endangered species in Southern California. Using photos sourced from the diving community, they found slightly more than 1,200 adult giant sea bass within Southern California waters from 2015 to 2022. The results, published in the Marine Ecology Progress Series represent an increasing trend in their numbers, suggesting ...

FAU CARD releases free water safety guide for children with Autism

2025-05-08
Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death for children aged 1 to 4 in Florida, and children with autism face even greater danger – many times more likely to drown than their neurotypical peers. One key factor behind this alarming statistic is wandering, also known as elopement. Nearly 50% of children with autism will wander from a safe environment at some point. These incidents can happen in a split second and often lead to children being drawn to nearby water sources such as pools, ponds or canals – many of which are unprotected. Children ...

Enhanced DLP-based one-step 3D printing of multifunctional magnetic soft robot

2025-05-08
In a research paper, scientists from the Tsinghua University proposed a novel enhanced Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D printing technology, capable of printing composite magnetic structures with different material sin a single step. Furthermore, a soft robot with a hard magnetic material-superparamagnetic material composite was designed and printed. The new research paper, published Feb. 26 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, introduces a soft robot based on DLP 3D printing technology, which presents extensive potential for the design and manufacturing of multifunctional soft robots. According to Wang, "various ...

Discovery opens up for new ways to treat chlamydia

2025-05-08
Researchers at Umeå University, Sweden, and Michigan State University, USA, have discovered a type of molecule that can kill chlamydia bacteria but spare bacteria that are important for health. The discovery opens the door for further research towards developing new antibiotics against chlamydia, the world's most common bacterial sexually transmitted disease with 130 million cases a year. "No one should have to live with chlamydia. But the problem is that the treatments we have today do not distinguish between dangerous and friendly bacteria. A growing problem is ...

Evaluating the safety and efficacy of a smallpox vaccine for preventing mpox

2025-05-08
In recent years, the world has seen a surge in new and deadly infectious diseases, posing a major threat to global health. Outbreaks of COVID-19, H1N1 (swine flu), Ebola, Zika, and monkeypox are a stark reminder of our vulnerability. While some of these viruses are new and relatively unknown, others, like the monkeypox virus (mpox virus or MPXV) have been around since the 1970s but have been endemic to parts of Africa. However, the recent global outbreak of mpox—caused by a newly identified variant that is more infectious than previous strains—has raised concerns across the world, ...

HIV drugs offer ‘substantial’ Alzheimer’s protection, new research indicates

2025-05-08
UVA Health scientists are calling for clinical trials testing the potential of HIV drugs called NRTIs to prevent Alzheimer’s disease after discovering that patients taking the drugs are substantially less likely to develop the memory-robbing condition. The researchers, led by UVA’s Jayakrishna Ambati, MD, previously identified a possible mechanism by which the drugs could prevent Alzheimer’s. That promising finding prompted them to analyze two of the nation’s largest health insurance databases ...

Common lung bacteria team up to evade immune defenses

2025-05-08
The incidence of infection by Mycobacterium abscessus, is increasing in patients with cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other chronic pulmonary diseases, leading to an accelerated lung function decline. Remarkably, 58–78% of patients with M. abscessus infection are also infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the most common pathogen in these conditions. However, how these two bacterial species interact during infection remains poorly understood. Now, a new study led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Universitat ...

Eating ultra-processed foods may harm your health

2025-05-08
Consumption of ultra-processed foods, such as sugar-sweetened beverages, potato chips and packaged cookies, may be associated with adverse health outcomes, according to research being presented at the ACC Asia 2025 Together with SCS 36th Annual Scientific Meeting taking place May 9-11 in Singapore. This risk for hypertension, other cardiovascular events, cancer, digestive diseases, mortality and more, increased with every 100 grams of ultra-processed foods consumed each day. “Ultra-processed foods are characterized by high sugar, high salt, and other non-nutritive components, exhibiting low nutritional density yet ...

Major US cities are sinking

2025-05-08
Twenty-eight major U.S. cities, including New York, Dallas, and Seattle, are seeing urban areas sink by 2 to 10 millimeters per year, according to new research from Virginia Tech. The major cause is groundwater extraction. Published in Nature Cities, the study used satellite-based radar measurements to create high-resolution maps of subsidence, or sinking land, for 28 of the most populous U.S. cities. The cities are home to 34 million people, about 12 percent of the total U.S. population. In every city studied, at least 20 percent of the urban area ...

New study traces sharp regional shifts in ischemic heart disease burden — a global warning signal

2025-05-08
A new study puts the spotlight on the rising burden of ischemic heart disease across Southeast Asia, East Asia and Oceania, and calls for localized, equity-focused interventions in these regions. The researchers identified region-specific, modifiable risk factors that influence the increasing prevalence of ischemic heart disease, such as toxic air pollution in East Asia and ultra-processed dietary dependence in Oceania. The study will be presented at the ACC Asia 2025 Together With SCS 36th Annual Scientific Meeting in Singapore.   Ischemic heart disease (IHD) occurs ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Global Virus Network meeting unites Caribbean and Latin America to tackle emerging viral threats

MD Anderson Research Highlights for May 8, 2025

Study of Türkiye gold mine landslide highlights need for future monitoring

Researchers find new defense against hard-to-treat plant diseases

Characterization of research grant terminations at the National Institutes of Health

New study: high efficiency of severe thalassemia prevention with HTS based carrier screening

AI-designed DNA controls genes in healthy mammalian cells for first time

Veterans with depression have increased risk of heart failure: Study

Maternal cardiometabolic risk factors in pregnancy and offspring blood pressure at ages 2 to 18

Depression and heart failure in US veterans

Experiences of care and gaslighting in patients with vulvovaginal disorders

Vitamin supplements slow down the progression of glaucoma

Physics: Eggs less likely to crack when dropped side-on

Study links maternal health risks during pregnancy to higher blood pressure in children

Building vaccines for future versions of a virus

Incidence of several early-onset cancers increased between 2010 and 2019

The road to lenacapavir, a breakthrough HIV treatment

Engineering an antibody against flu with sticky staying power

Is AI truly creative? Turns out creativity is in the eye of the beholder

Community science helps reveal population growth among SoCal’s endangered giant sea bass

FAU CARD releases free water safety guide for children with Autism

Enhanced DLP-based one-step 3D printing of multifunctional magnetic soft robot

Discovery opens up for new ways to treat chlamydia

Evaluating the safety and efficacy of a smallpox vaccine for preventing mpox

HIV drugs offer ‘substantial’ Alzheimer’s protection, new research indicates

Common lung bacteria team up to evade immune defenses

Eating ultra-processed foods may harm your health

Major US cities are sinking

New study traces sharp regional shifts in ischemic heart disease burden — a global warning signal

Too fast to see

[Press-News.org] Is AI truly creative? Turns out creativity is in the eye of the beholder
The more we see of a creative act, the more creative we judge it to be. Researchers think these findings could change the way we design AI.