Probing and Inducing Combinational Creativity in Vision-Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Peng, Yongqian, Ma, Yuxi, Wang, Mengmeng, Wang, Yuxuan, Wang, Yizhou, Zhang, Chi, Zhu, Yixin, Zheng, Zilong
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Peng, Yongqian
Ma, Yuxi
Wang, Mengmeng
Wang, Yuxuan
Wang, Yizhou
Zhang, Chi
Zhu, Yixin
Zheng, Zilong
author_facet Peng, Yongqian
Ma, Yuxi
Wang, Mengmeng
Wang, Yuxuan
Wang, Yizhou
Zhang, Chi
Zhu, Yixin
Zheng, Zilong
contents The ability to combine existing concepts into novel ideas stands as a fundamental hallmark of human intelligence. Recent advances in Vision-Language Models (VLMs) like GPT-4V and DALLE-3 have sparked debate about whether their outputs reflect combinational creativity--defined by M. A. Boden (1998) as synthesizing novel ideas through combining existing concepts--or sophisticated pattern matching of training data. Drawing inspiration from cognitive science, we investigate the combinational creativity of VLMs from the lens of concept blending. We propose the Identification-Explanation-Implication (IEI) framework, which decomposes creative processes into three levels: identifying input spaces, extracting shared attributes, and deriving novel semantic implications. To validate this framework, we curate CreativeMashup, a high-quality dataset of 666 artist-generated visual mashups annotated according to the IEI framework. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that in comprehension tasks, best VLMs have surpassed average human performance while falling short of expert-level understanding; in generation tasks, incorporating our IEI framework into the generation pipeline significantly enhances the creative quality of VLMs' outputs. Our findings establish both a theoretical foundation for evaluating artificial creativity and practical guidelines for improving creative generation in VLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_13120
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Probing and Inducing Combinational Creativity in Vision-Language Models
Peng, Yongqian
Ma, Yuxi
Wang, Mengmeng
Wang, Yuxuan
Wang, Yizhou
Zhang, Chi
Zhu, Yixin
Zheng, Zilong
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
The ability to combine existing concepts into novel ideas stands as a fundamental hallmark of human intelligence. Recent advances in Vision-Language Models (VLMs) like GPT-4V and DALLE-3 have sparked debate about whether their outputs reflect combinational creativity--defined by M. A. Boden (1998) as synthesizing novel ideas through combining existing concepts--or sophisticated pattern matching of training data. Drawing inspiration from cognitive science, we investigate the combinational creativity of VLMs from the lens of concept blending. We propose the Identification-Explanation-Implication (IEI) framework, which decomposes creative processes into three levels: identifying input spaces, extracting shared attributes, and deriving novel semantic implications. To validate this framework, we curate CreativeMashup, a high-quality dataset of 666 artist-generated visual mashups annotated according to the IEI framework. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that in comprehension tasks, best VLMs have surpassed average human performance while falling short of expert-level understanding; in generation tasks, incorporating our IEI framework into the generation pipeline significantly enhances the creative quality of VLMs' outputs. Our findings establish both a theoretical foundation for evaluating artificial creativity and practical guidelines for improving creative generation in VLMs.
title Probing and Inducing Combinational Creativity in Vision-Language Models
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.13120