Creativity in the Age of AI: Rethinking the Role of Intentional Agency
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866912840814690304 |
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| author | Pearson, James S. Dennis, Matthew J. Cheong, Marc |
| author_facet | Pearson, James S. Dennis, Matthew J. Cheong, Marc |
| contents | Many theorists of creativity maintain that intentional agency is a necessary condition of creativity. We argue that this requirement, which we call the Intentional Agency Condition (IAC), should be rejected as a general condition of creativity, while retaining its relevance in specific contexts. We show that recent advances in generative AI have rendered the IAC increasingly problematic, both descriptively and functionally. We offer two reasons for abandoning it at the general level. First, we present corpus evidence indicating that authors and journalists are increasingly comfortable ascribing creativity to generative AI, despite its lack of intentional agency. This development places pressure on the linguistic intuitions that have traditionally been taken to support the IAC. Second, drawing on the method of conceptual engineering, we argue that the IAC no longer fulfils its core social function. Rather than facilitating the identification and encouragement of reliable sources of novel and valuable products, it now feeds into biases that distort our assessments of AI-generated outputs. We therefore propose replacing the IAC with a consistency requirement, according to which creativity tracks the reliable generation of novel and valuable products. Nonetheless, we explain why the IAC should be retained in specific local domains. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_15797 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Creativity in the Age of AI: Rethinking the Role of Intentional Agency Pearson, James S. Dennis, Matthew J. Cheong, Marc Artificial Intelligence 68T01 Many theorists of creativity maintain that intentional agency is a necessary condition of creativity. We argue that this requirement, which we call the Intentional Agency Condition (IAC), should be rejected as a general condition of creativity, while retaining its relevance in specific contexts. We show that recent advances in generative AI have rendered the IAC increasingly problematic, both descriptively and functionally. We offer two reasons for abandoning it at the general level. First, we present corpus evidence indicating that authors and journalists are increasingly comfortable ascribing creativity to generative AI, despite its lack of intentional agency. This development places pressure on the linguistic intuitions that have traditionally been taken to support the IAC. Second, drawing on the method of conceptual engineering, we argue that the IAC no longer fulfils its core social function. Rather than facilitating the identification and encouragement of reliable sources of novel and valuable products, it now feeds into biases that distort our assessments of AI-generated outputs. We therefore propose replacing the IAC with a consistency requirement, according to which creativity tracks the reliable generation of novel and valuable products. Nonetheless, we explain why the IAC should be retained in specific local domains. |
| title | Creativity in the Age of AI: Rethinking the Role of Intentional Agency |
| topic | Artificial Intelligence 68T01 |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15797 |