Artificial muses: Generative Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Have Risen to Human-Level Creativity

A widespread belief holds that Artificial Intelligence cannot be creative. We tested this assumption by comparing human-generated ideas with those generated by six Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) chatbots: alpa.ai, Copy.ai, ChatGPT (versions 3 and 4), Studio.ai, and YouChat. Humans and a trained AI independently assessed the quality (i.e., originality) and quantity (fluency) of ideas. We found no difference between AI and human-generated creativity, although there were differences in how ideas were generated. Interestingly, 9.4% of humans were more creative than the most creative GAI, ChatGPT-4. Our findings suggest that GAIs are valuable assistants in the creative process. Continued research and development of GAI in creative tasks is crucial to fully understand this technology's potential benefits and drawbacks in shaping the future of creativity. Finally, we discuss whether GAIs are capable of being “truly” creative.