IDEAFix: Evaluation Framework for Creative Defixation Prompting in LLMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Carichon, F., Sharma, S., Girard, M., Rampa, R., Farnadi, G.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Carichon, F.
Sharma, S.
Girard, M.
Rampa, R.
Farnadi, G.
author_facet Carichon, F.
Sharma, S.
Girard, M.
Rampa, R.
Farnadi, G.
contents Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for tasks involving creative problem solving and idea generation. However, there is a lack of consensus concerning their creative capabilities: some studies report superior performances compared to humans, while others highlight structural limitations such as fixation and the homogenization of outputs. Existing evaluation approaches either rely on narrow, decontextualized tasks that do not capture goal-oriented generation or on broader settings that confound multiple aspects of the creative process, making it difficult to isolate the effects of task formulation, prompting, and evaluation design. Significantly, the role of structured prompting strategies in shaping idea generation remains underexplored. Therefore, we introduce IDEAFix, an evaluation framework for analyzing divergent thinking in open-ended idea generation tasks. We prompt models to generate multiple original solutions to controlled variations of short design scenarios, task attributes, and defixation prompting strategies. This design enables systematic analysis of how structured guidance influences LLMs' idea generation. Our results show that both task formulation and attribute selection significantly affect models' performance, and that simple prompting strategies can boost the originality of solutions. However, we also observe persistent output homogenization across models, confirming inherent limits in their ability to generate diverse solutions. Overall, IDEAFix provides a controlled, extensible framework for studying the mechanisms underlying LLMs' creativity.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_00875
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle IDEAFix: Evaluation Framework for Creative Defixation Prompting in LLMs
Carichon, F.
Sharma, S.
Girard, M.
Rampa, R.
Farnadi, G.
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for tasks involving creative problem solving and idea generation. However, there is a lack of consensus concerning their creative capabilities: some studies report superior performances compared to humans, while others highlight structural limitations such as fixation and the homogenization of outputs. Existing evaluation approaches either rely on narrow, decontextualized tasks that do not capture goal-oriented generation or on broader settings that confound multiple aspects of the creative process, making it difficult to isolate the effects of task formulation, prompting, and evaluation design. Significantly, the role of structured prompting strategies in shaping idea generation remains underexplored. Therefore, we introduce IDEAFix, an evaluation framework for analyzing divergent thinking in open-ended idea generation tasks. We prompt models to generate multiple original solutions to controlled variations of short design scenarios, task attributes, and defixation prompting strategies. This design enables systematic analysis of how structured guidance influences LLMs' idea generation. Our results show that both task formulation and attribute selection significantly affect models' performance, and that simple prompting strategies can boost the originality of solutions. However, we also observe persistent output homogenization across models, confirming inherent limits in their ability to generate diverse solutions. Overall, IDEAFix provides a controlled, extensible framework for studying the mechanisms underlying LLMs' creativity.
title IDEAFix: Evaluation Framework for Creative Defixation Prompting in LLMs
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.00875