A new study by researchers from University of Exeter and University of College of London School of Management finds that AI tools like ChatGPT can affect creativity and can impact novel ideas. The researchers studied story ideas generated by LLMs and story ideas written by humans. They found that AI generated story ideas are negatively impacting creativity of human short story writers.
Whole study was based on short story writing. The participants of the study were asked to write short stories with no more than eight lines above an assigned subject. The creativity was measured through novelty and usefulness of the story. The researchers said that creative writing can get impacted by generative AI in two ways.
In one-way, generative AI can provide humans with creative ideas for their stories and humans can input their own creativity too. But on the other hand, generative AI can completely restrict human creativity by giving its own ideas from the very start. If this happens, generative AI will likely produce more similar stories and there would be less creative human input.
For the study, the researchers gathered 293 participants and asked them to write a short story. They were divided into three groups. The first group was given no assistance from AI, the second group was given a three-sentenced story idea generated by AI and the third group was given five AI generated story ideas. The writers then assessed their writing based on usefulness, novelty and emotional levels.
The results showed that use of AI produced more novel and useful ideas. The group that had access to five AI generated ideas showed impressive results in creativity. Due to more ideas, writers could have a broad range of ideas to explore and write about. The researchers say that generative AI acts as an equalizer that removes any point that acts as a disadvantage in writing. The evaluators of the stories also said that AI assisted stories were more enjoyable and better written.
Even though AI could help in creativity, the researchers also found that AI generated ideas were similar to each other. This raises concerns about the similarity of AI produced content. It is important for writers to only take limited ideas from generative AI as there's a risk their work could lose novelty and uniqueness.
Image: AI-gen
Read next: Despite the Widespread Popularity of ChatGPT, Not Many People Use It Regularly in the World
Whole study was based on short story writing. The participants of the study were asked to write short stories with no more than eight lines above an assigned subject. The creativity was measured through novelty and usefulness of the story. The researchers said that creative writing can get impacted by generative AI in two ways.
In one-way, generative AI can provide humans with creative ideas for their stories and humans can input their own creativity too. But on the other hand, generative AI can completely restrict human creativity by giving its own ideas from the very start. If this happens, generative AI will likely produce more similar stories and there would be less creative human input.
For the study, the researchers gathered 293 participants and asked them to write a short story. They were divided into three groups. The first group was given no assistance from AI, the second group was given a three-sentenced story idea generated by AI and the third group was given five AI generated story ideas. The writers then assessed their writing based on usefulness, novelty and emotional levels.
The results showed that use of AI produced more novel and useful ideas. The group that had access to five AI generated ideas showed impressive results in creativity. Due to more ideas, writers could have a broad range of ideas to explore and write about. The researchers say that generative AI acts as an equalizer that removes any point that acts as a disadvantage in writing. The evaluators of the stories also said that AI assisted stories were more enjoyable and better written.
Even though AI could help in creativity, the researchers also found that AI generated ideas were similar to each other. This raises concerns about the similarity of AI produced content. It is important for writers to only take limited ideas from generative AI as there's a risk their work could lose novelty and uniqueness.
Read next: Despite the Widespread Popularity of ChatGPT, Not Many People Use It Regularly in the World
