Authors: Deepa Barethiya, Pratik Gajbhiye, Siddhi Lokhande
Abstract: This paper explores the extent to which artificial intelligence (AI) systems, increasingly capable of creating visual artworks indistinguishable from human-created ones, are part of the broader conversation about creativity and the role of AI in the creative process. Expanding on existing research that considers AI creativity as a whole construct, this paper focuses on a component-based approach to creativity, examining it as a series of discrete components. An empirical analysis is also presented to compare AI-created and human-created artworks with respect to the most important factors traditionally associated with human creativity: emotional depth, intentionality, originality, awareness of context, and experiential authenticity. A quantitative approach was taken using a survey-based methodology, in which a series of artworks were evaluated using a structured Likert-scale survey. The results were analyzed using comparative statistics to determine performance differences between AI-created and human-created artworks across each creativity component. The results show that AI-created artworks exhibit uneven creative performance, with higher visual originality and significant shortcomings in emotional depth and intentionality compared to human-created artworks. These results suggest that creativity is a multidimensional construct and that current AI systems have difficulties in recreating several core components of human creativity. This paper contributes to the existing literature on AI and creativity by providing a structured approach to evaluating AI-created artworks beyond superficial visual aesthetics and highlighting implications for the role of AI as a creative tool versus an autonomous artist.
