A graphic design discovered in a cave in South Africa, dating back 73,000 years to the Middle Stone Age, is a powerful reminder of the human capacity for imagination and the unique stories we have expressed through art for millennia. However, human artistry today faces competition from artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.
A recent study published by the American Psychological Association indicates that human artists still outperform AI in creative tasks.
This study involved 30 talented artists, half with over five years of professional experience and the other half just starting their artistic journeys.
Participants crafted prompts of up to 15 words in the experiment, which were then fed into the DALL-E 3 AI program to produce artistic images. Additionally, these prompts were repeated 15 times in the ChatGPT AI program to generate instructions for DALL-E 3.
Over 299 online participants had the opportunity to view 45 generated artwork images and rated them on their creativity.
The results were truly remarkable: artwork derived from the prompts of professional artists was rated significantly more creative than that created by AI, while the work of novice artists received the lowest scores.
A deeper dive into the results revealed some interesting trends. Skilled artists combined longer, more complex prompts, likely leading to more imaginative outcomes.
They utilized words in their prompts with a greater semantic distance, meaning they were more seemingly unrelated.
Lead researcher Paul Seli, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, shared insights on the concept of creativity itself.
He emphasizes that whether AI can be called “creative” is grounded in our definition of creativity.
While AI can generate images that may seem creative, it doesn’t quite measure up if we attach true creativity to human experiences, emotions, and the intentionality behind creation.
Seli warns that the gap between AI and professional artists could become smaller as technology evolves, significantly if AI improves at grasping artistic intention or mimicking human intuition.
However, the uniquely human facets of creativity—like emotional depth and lived experiences—are likely to keep our artistic expressions distinctly human for the foreseeable future.
The research piece, “Beyond the Brush: Human Versus AI Creativity in the Realm of Generative Art,” was co-authored by experts from Duke University, Harvard University, and the University of Cambridge. It was published in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts on February 27, 2025.
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