Extended Creativity: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Human-AI Creative Relations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for understanding how AI can support human creativity through three modes—Support, Synergy, and Symbiosis—based on autonomy and perceived agency, influencing various creativity levels.

Contribution

It introduces a relational framework categorizing human-AI creative interactions into three modes, integrating autonomy and agency dimensions to guide future system design.

Findings

AI can support creativity as a tool, collaborator, or integrated system.

Different configurations impact creativity levels from everyday to paradigm-shifting.

Implications for ethics and design of human-AI creative systems are discussed.

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence holds significant potential to enhance human creativity. However, achieving this vision requires a clearer understanding of how such enhancement can be effectively realized. Drawing on a relational and distributed cognition perspective, we identify three fundamental modes by which AI can support and shape creative processes: Support, where AI acts as a tool; Synergy, where AI and humans collaborate in complementary ways; and Symbiosis, where human and AI cognition become so integrated that they form a unified creative system. These modes are defined along two key dimensions: the level of technical autonomy exhibited by the AI system (i.e., its ability to operate independently and make decisions without human intervention), and the degree of perceived agency attributed to it (i.e., the extent to which the AI is experienced as an intentional or creative partner). We examine how each configuration influences different levels of creativity from everyday problem solving to paradigm shifting innovation and discuss the implications for ethics, research, and the design of future human AI creative systems.