Not ‘what’, but ‘where is creativity?’: towards a relational-materialist approach to generative AI

Abstract

The recent emergence of generative AI software as viable tools for use in the cultural and creative industries has sparked debates about the potential for “creativity” to be automated and “augmented” by algorithmic machines. Such discussions, however, begin from an ontological position, attempting to define creativity by either falling prey to universalism (i.e. “creativity is X”) or reductionism (i.e. “only humans can be truly creative” or “human creativity will be fully replaced by creative machines”). Furthermore, such an approach evades addressing the real and material impacts of AI on creative labour in these industries. This article thus offers more expansive methodological and conceptual approaches to the recent hype on generative AI. By combining Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (2014) systems view of creativity, in which we emphasise the shift from “what” to “where” is creativity, with Leah Lievrouw’s (2014) relational-materialist theory of “mediation”, we argue that the study of “creativity” in the context of generative AI must be attentive to the interactions between technologies, practices, and social arrangements. When exploring the relational space between these elements, three core concepts become pertinent: creative labour, automation, and distributed agency. Critiquing “creativity” through these conceptual lenses allows us to re-situate the use of generative AI within discourses of labour in post-industrial capitalism and brings us to a conceptualisation of creativity that privileges neither human user nor machine algorithm but instead emphasises a relational and distributed form of agency.