The creativity of artificial intelligence

IF 1.5 3区经济学 Q2 ECONOMICS

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2026-02-26 DOI:10.1016/j.socec.2026.102528

Benjamin Prissé , Ruotong Deng , Jun Quan Ho , Dinithi Jayasekara , Chris Ouangraoua

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Abstract

This paper investigates how humans evaluate the creativity of AI-generated artworks in comparison to the human artworks from which they were derived. Using a novel experimental framework, we commissioned original artworks across three distinct art styles: animal charcoal drawings, minimalist commercial logos, and watercolor landscapes. We then prompted Stable Diffusion to produce artworks based on the commissioned pieces. Participants evaluated the creativity of both human- and AI-generated artworks by assigning a grade between 0 and 10, and then bid for these drawings in an auction to examine how monetary costs influenced their choices. Participants then evaluated the creativity of a sample of selected AI-generated artworks to investigate the factors that drive perceptions of creativity. Results show that AI-generated drawings are consistently rated as more creative and elicit higher bids in the landscape treatment. The perceived creativity of AI-generated drawings is driven by detailed features, scene construction, and color use, while errors do not diminish perceived creativity and may even enhance it. These findings suggest that AI-generated artwork is preferred by participants due to its higher aesthetic appeal.

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人工智能的创造力

本文研究了人类如何评估人工智能生成的艺术品与源自它们的人类艺术品的创造力。采用新颖的实验框架，我们委托创作了三种不同艺术风格的原创作品：动物炭笔画、极简主义商业标志和水彩风景。然后，我们促使Stable Diffusion根据委托作品制作艺术品。参与者通过在0到10之间打分来评估人类和人工智能创作的艺术品的创造力，然后在拍卖中竞标这些画作，以检查货币成本如何影响他们的选择。然后，参与者评估了选定的人工智能生成艺术品样本的创造力，以调查驱动创造力感知的因素。结果表明，人工智能生成的图纸一直被评为更具创造性，并在景观处理中引起更高的出价。人工智能生成的图纸的感知创造力是由细节特征、场景构建和色彩使用驱动的，而错误不会降低感知创造力，甚至可能增强它。这些发现表明，参与者更喜欢人工智能生成的艺术品，因为它具有更高的审美吸引力。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

2.60

自引率

12.50%

发文量

113

审稿时长

83 days

期刊介绍： The Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly the Journal of Socio-Economics) welcomes submissions that deal with various economic topics but also involve issues that are related to other social sciences, especially psychology, or use experimental methods of inquiry. Thus, contributions in behavioral economics, experimental economics, economic psychology, and judgment and decision making are especially welcome. The journal is open to different research methodologies, as long as they are relevant to the topic and employed rigorously. Possible methodologies include, for example, experiments, surveys, empirical work, theoretical models, meta-analyses, case studies, and simulation-based analyses. Literature reviews that integrate findings from many studies are also welcome, but they should synthesize the literature in a useful manner and provide substantial contribution beyond what the reader could get by simply reading the abstracts of the cited papers. In empirical work, it is important that the results are not only statistically significant but also economically significant. A high contribution-to-length ratio is expected from published articles and therefore papers should not be unnecessarily long, and short articles are welcome. Articles should be written in a manner that is intelligible to our generalist readership. Book reviews are generally solicited but occasionally unsolicited reviews will also be published. Contact the Book Review Editor for related inquiries.