AI can make you more creative--but it has limits

That's what two researchers set out to explore in new research published today in Science Advances, studying how people used OpenAI's large language model GPT-4 to write short stories. The model was helpful--but only to an extent. They found that while AI improved the output of less creative writers, it made little difference to the quality of the stories produced by writers who were already creative. The stories in which AI had played a part were also more similar to each other than those dreamed up entirely by humans. The research adds to the growing body of work investigating how generative AI affects human creativity, suggesting that although access to AI can offer a creative boost to an individual, it reduces creativity in the aggregate.