AI is rewriting creativity.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines creativity as “the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas”, with synonyms including imagination or vision. 

Whether composing music, painting masterpieces, writing stories, deciding the right course of action or designing new products, the creative process has traditionally relied on personal imagination, emotion, and lived experience. 

Today, however, artificial intelligence is reshaping and redefining what creativity can look like in the digital age. The capabilities of modern AI systems, such as Copilot and ChatGPT, can seem almost limitless. They can create artwork, compose music, write articles, design logos, and even support storyboarding and filmmaking. And that’s just professional use - people can also use it to plan their day, organise workouts, book holidays, or even help with cooking. 

How does it do that? 

In simple terms, the systems analyse vast amounts of data to identify patterns, which they then use to make predictions, decisions, or generate new content. Using the data, AI can produce new content that mirrors - or sometimes reinvents - existing forms of human creativity. 

There are two main ways AI is changing how we define creativity 

The first is through collaboration, with tools used as creative partners, to spark ideas or provide inspiration. For example, writers may use AI to brainstorm ideas and artists may use it to explore new styles. This spark and collaboration can accelerate the creative process by helping creators overcome barriers we’ve all experienced, like creative block or time constraints. 

The second is the democratisation of creativity – ease of access to creative tools and content generation. Historically, producing professional-quality creative work required years of training, skills and even access to expensive tools. AI-powered platforms are lowering the barriers to entry – even with no experience, you can generate polished graphics, marketing copy, or video concepts within minutes. All you need is a clear brief and AI systems can do the rest. As a result, creative expression is becoming more accessible to a wider audience than ever before. 

What is the impact of this? 

The growth of AI-generated creativity raises important questions. 

Authorship, originality, and intellectual property are becoming more complex issues and the use of AI introduces significant grey areas. For example, if ChatGPT produces a painting inspired by thousands of existing artworks, who owns the finished product? Is the AI system the designer, or the person who wrote the brief and had the original vision? These questions are still being actively debated by legal experts and technology companies around the world – with some countries banning certain AI platforms. 

Then, there are concerns about the potential impact on creative professionals and what it means to be one. The argument against AI systems is the fear they could replace designers, writers, illustrators, and others who work in creative industries. Supporters, however see a world where routine, mundane tasks become automated, with humans (as the vision) and AI working together in a form of hybrid creativity. 

So, we know the impacts, but what does this really mean for the definition of creativity? 

If creativity is about original and individual ideas, then those ideas are a direct result of our human experiences, emotion and imagination. Crucially, AI does not possess consciousness or true understanding - its creative ability comes from patterns learned in data. As humans, we still bring meaning, cultural context, and emotional depth to our work, which forms the crux of creativity. AI cannot replicate this, and therefore, while it can “create” it is not replacing “creativity”. Rather, the definition of creativity is expanding, as human and artificial intelligence work together to innovate and create entirely new forms of art and storytelling.