A Paradigm for Creative Ownership

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive framework for understanding creative ownership in human-AI collaboration, providing shared language, a visualization tool, and empirical validation through interviews with creative professionals.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel three-dimensional framework of creative ownership, a visualization tool, and empirical evidence of its usefulness in HCI research.

Findings

Framework fully covers initial ownership concepts from participants.

Participants expanded on the framework, revealing richer insights.

The framework and tool facilitate better understanding of ownership in AI-assisted creativity.

Abstract

As generative AI tools become embedded in creative practice, questions of ownership in co-creative contexts are pressing. Yet studies of human-AI collaboration often invoke "ownership" without definition: sometimes conflating it with other concepts, and other times leaving interpretation to participants. This inconsistency makes findings difficult to compare across or even within studies. We introduce a framework of creative ownership comprising three dimensions - Person, Process, and System - each with three subdimensions, offering a shared language for both system design and HCI research. In semi-structured interviews with 21 creative professionals, we found that participants' initial references to ownership (e.g., embodiment, control, concept) were fully encompassed by the framework, demonstrating its coverage. Once introduced, however, they also articulated and prioritized the remaining subdimensions, underscoring how the framework expands reflection and enables richer insights. Our contributions include 1) the framework, 2) a web-based visualization tool, and 3) empirical findings on its utility.