Artificial intelligence boosts creativity, but reduces variety

Recent studies have shown that incorporating artificial intelligence in the creative process can have some surprisingly beneficial effects, especially for those who struggle with creativity.

However, these advancements may come with an unexpected quandary: a potential reduction in the diversity and novelty of our collective storytelling.

Renowned researchers from two highly reputed institutions – the University of Exeter Business School, Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and the UCL School of Management, have delved into this riveting topic, exploring the involvement of AI in the realms of creativity and story-writing.

AI enhances creativity, but at what cost?

Insights from the study indicated that AI assistance was able to “professionalize” stories, making them more enjoyable to read due to an increase in unexpected plot twists and generally improved writing quality. The result? Content that was far from dull.

In an experiment involving 300 participants, each asked to write a micro story aimed at young adults, AI proved to be a significant asset for those deemed less creative.

The AI-assisted stories were up to 26.6% better written and 15.2% less boring than their human-only counterparts.

The borrowed intelligence, however, offered limited benefits to the participants who were naturally more creative.

Individual creativity vs. collective novelty

While AI does seem to enhance individual creativity, the study also indicates a resultant decline in collective novelty.

The AI-assisted stories showcased notable similarities to one another, pointing towards a loss of variety and diversity in content generation.

The research was carried out with the participants divided into three groups. Some had no access to AI help, some could utilize ChatGPT to provide a three-sentence starting idea, and others could choose from up to five AI-generated ideas.

The quality of these stories was then assessed by 600 individuals, based on their novelty and “usefulness.”

The results showed that writers with access to AI witnessed the most significant improvements in their creativity. Their stories scored 8.1% higher for novelty and 9% higher for usefulness compared to those written without AI assistance.

A level playing field

An exciting revelation from this study was the capability of AI to level the playing field between less and more creative writers.

By providing less creative writers access to five AI ideas, their novelty improved by 10.7% and usefulness by 11.5% compared to those who used no AI concepts.

The writing quality, enjoyability, and intrigue of the stories were significantly enhanced, putting writers with low creativity scores on par with their more creative counterparts.

The future of artificial intelligence in creativity

Despite these positive impacts, there’s a more significant underlying concern. Using OpenAI’s embeddings application programming interface (API), the researchers identified a 10.7% increase in similarity between stories that used one generative AI idea, compared with the group that wrote without AI assistance.

Professor Oliver Hauser, Deputy Director of the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, highlighted the importance of this study.

“This is a first step in studying a question fundamental to all human behavior: how does generative AI affect human creativity? Our results provide insight into how generative AI can enhance creativity, and removes any disadvantage or advantage based on the writers’ inherent creativity.”

Professor Anil Doshi from the UCL School of Management added: “While these results point to an increase in individual creativity, there is a risk of losing collective novelty. If the publishing industry were to embrace more generative AI-inspired stories, our findings suggest that the stories would become less unique in aggregate and more similar to each other.”

Professor Hauser warned that this downward spiral shows parallels to an emerging social dilemma: if individual writers find out that their generative AI-inspired writing is evaluated as more creative, they have an incentive to use generative AI more in the future, but by doing so the collective novelty of stories may be reduced further.

“In short, our results suggest that despite the enhancement effect that generative AI had on individual creativity, there may be a cautionary note if generative AI were adopted more widely for creative tasks.”

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

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