Am I Still Creative? The Effect of Artificial Intelligence on Creative Self-Beliefs

Abstract

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping society, highlighting the need to better understand its implications for human creativity. This investigation explores the relationship and differences between people's general creative self-beliefs and their creative self-beliefs in an AI-specific context (i.e., while using AI tools). It further investigates the role played by AI-specific creative self-beliefs and AI-augmented creative activity for creative achievement. In a study on Prolific panel members (N = 273), we found that people's general creative self-beliefs were notably higher than their AI-specific beliefs (d = 0.75). Moreover, the relationship between general and AI-specific creative self-beliefs followed a necessary-yet-not-sufficient pattern; feeling creative in AI settings was unlikely when general creative self-beliefs were low, yet strong general creative self-beliefs did not guarantee feeling creative when using AI. Finally, although general creative self-beliefs were both directly and indirectly (via creative activity) positively associated with creative achievement, AI-specific beliefs were only indirectly linked to achievement via AI-augmented creative activities, with more puzzling direct links observed. We discuss the implications of these findings and offer some future research avenues.