JurnalPost.com - For years, creativity has been viewed as an inherent human ability. A person is considered creative because they possess imagination, intuition, experience, and the capacity to connect various ideas into something new. In the world of art and the creative industries, a work is often understood as a reflection of its creator's personality, thoughts, and life experiences.
However, the development of artificial intelligence or artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, is beginning to change that perspective.
Now, one can generate images through text prompts, create music without playing an instrument, or assemble videos without direct filming. Technology that previously merely assisted human work is now becoming involved in the creative process itself.
This shift is not just about AI's ability to produce work in a short time. A more fundamental issue is how technology is beginning to influence the human process of discovering, developing, and determining the direction of an idea.
A creator, for instance, can use AI to seek inspiration, explore visual possibilities, develop story concepts, and compare various creative alternatives. The results provided by AI then become material for consideration in making subsequent creative decisions.
In this situation, an important question arises: if technology helps shape ideas and influences human creative decisions, can creativity still be understood as a purely individual ability?
The Human-AI Relationship in the Creative Process
In communication studies, technology has traditionally been understood as a medium connecting humans to one another.
Newspapers, radio, television, and the internet serve as channels for conveying messages. Humans act as communicators or recipients, while technology functions as an intermediary.
The presence of generative AI is beginning to change this pattern of interaction.
AI is no longer just a channel for information. This technology is capable of responding to questions, offering ideas, generating alternatives, and providing input that can influence a user's decisions.
This shift in relationship has become a focus in the study of Human–Machine Communication (HMC), which examines communication and interaction between humans and machines.
A systematic review of 209 articles in 2026, as referenced in HMC discussions, shows increasing attention toward generative technology and the blurring lines between human-machine communication and AI-mediated communication.
This change has significant consequences for the creative world.
Previously, the relationship between humans and technology tended to follow a relatively simple pattern. Humans had an idea, then used specific tools to realize it.
A photographer uses a camera to capture an image. A painter uses a brush to pour out their imagination. An editor uses software to arrange visual sequences based on their artistic decisions.
Generative AI presents a different pattern.
A creator can provide instructions or prompts, and the AI then generates a number of possibilities. These results can spark new inspiration that was previously unthought of.
The creator then refines the instructions, requests other alternatives, compares results, and selects the possibility deemed most appropriate.
This process can occur repeatedly until a final work is formed.
Thus, AI output is not only the result of human decisions but can also serve as input that influences subsequent creative choices.
This type of relationship has led to the term 'human-AI collaboration' being used more frequently.
However, the concept of collaboration must be understood with caution.
Saying that humans collaborate with AI does not mean both possess the same consciousness, experience, will, or responsibility.
AI does not have a childhood that shapes its worldview. AI also does not feel anxiety when an idea fails to materialize, nor does it bear the social consequences of a work as humans do.
Nevertheless, the term collaboration still helps explain that the human relationship with technology is no longer limited to the use of passive tools.
In practice, the involvement of AI is also highly diverse.
Some creators use it to accelerate technical work, while the process of finding ideas and making decisions remains done independently.
Others use AI as a means to expand their imagination, open up new possibilities, and overcome limitations in budget or production capabilities.
There are also creators who involve AI in almost every stage, from concept exploration to final development.
These differences show that the human-AI relationship cannot be simplified into just two categories: machine as a tool or machine as a creator.
Beerens, Black, and Naseer (2026), for example, discuss how the human-AI relationship can evolve from using technology as a tool toward a more collaborative and symbiotic form of work.
In such a relationship, the division of roles can change throughout the creative process.
This means that creativity no longer always follows a fixed division of labor between humans as idea-generators and machines as instruction-executors.
The relationship between the two can continuously change through processes of interaction, evaluation, and decision-making.
Creativity Has Never Been Entirely Individual
The development of AI also invites us to re-examine how we understand creativity.
So far, the success of a work is often linked to a specific individual. Films are linked to their directors, novels to their authors, paintings to their painters, and songs to their musicians.
This perspective creates the impression that creativity comes from one primary source: the mind of a creator.
In reality, the creative process almost never occurs entirely in isolation from its surroundings.
In film production, for example, the director works with actors, cinematographers, art directors, editors, and music composers.
Creative decisions are also influenced by budgets, production equipment, locations, time, and various other limitations.
Even when someone produces a work alone, their ideas are still shaped by various experiences and external influences.
The language used is a result of social learning. Imagination develops through the experience of seeing and hearing. Artistic choices are influenced by education, culture, environment, and available technology.
In other words, creativity is never entirely detached from the human relationship with the world around them.
From a sociocultural perspective, creativity is not just understood as an ability residing within someone's mind.
Vlad Glăveanu, through his sociocultural approach, views creativity as a process formed through the interaction between individuals, social environments, materials, perspectives, and various possible actions.
This view shows that creativity is not merely a matter of who first discovered an idea.
Equally important is how ideas emerge, develop, take shape, and gain meaning through human relationships with their environment.
From this perspective, the presence of AI does not entirely introduce a new phenomenon.
Humans have long created things through interactions with other people, culture, materials, and technology.
The difference lies in the nature of the technology now being used.
A book can inspire an author, but it cannot formulate new answers when engaged in a discussion.
A camera allows a director to record images, but conventionally, it does not offer various story possibilities based on conversations with its user.
Meanwhile, generative AI can respond to instructions and produce alternatives that change according to the direction of the interaction.
This capability is what gives AI a different position in the creative process.
Technology can function as a source of inspiration, a production tool, and part of the interaction process that shapes human decisions.
As a result, the boundaries between tool, source of ideas, and part of the creation process become increasingly difficult to separate.
However, this condition does not mean that creativity has shifted entirely from humans to machines.
Rather, AI demonstrates that creation is a process involving a complex network of relationships.
A work can be formed through the meeting of human experience, culture, conversation, technology, data, algorithms, limitations, and various decisions made during the production process.
Within this network, humans still hold an important role, especially in determining the purpose, context, and meaning of a work.
When Generating Ideas Is No Longer Enough
The development of generative AI brings another equally important change: an abundance of creative possibilities.
If previously one needed a long time to create various visual alternatives, now AI can produce dozens of options in a much shorter time.
The ability to produce something new, which has long been considered one of the main measures of creativity, is beginning to face challenges.
When technology is capable of producing so many alternatives, the quantity of ideas is no longer a sufficient measure of the quality of the creative process.
The issue that arises is no longer merely how to produce something, but how to determine what is truly worth realizing.
Imagine a creator designing an emotional scene in a film.
AI might offer dozens of visual compositions with dramatic lighting and attractive image quality.
However, not all of these options fit the needs of the story.
An image might look beautiful but fail to convey the character's emotions. Another option might appear technically perfect but feel clichéd.
Conversely, a simple composition might be the most appropriate choice because it can direct the audience's attention to the emotional experience intended to be conveyed.
At this point, the human ability to judge becomes crucial.
Creativity is not only about generating new possibilities but also about determining which possibilities are relevant, meaningful, and appropriate to the context.
Imagination, intuition, life experience, and human skills still hold an important position.
However, when AI participates in generating various alternatives, the value of creativity is increasingly linked to the ability to provide direction and perform assessment.
Humans need to know not only what can be made, but also why something needs to be made.
The Creator as Director and Arbiter of Meaning
In a situation where technology can generate many possibilities, the role of the creator can be understood as increasingly resembling a conductor in an orchestra.
The conductor does not play all the instruments that produce the music.
However, their role remains to determine how various sounds are arranged into a meaningful whole.
They determine when an instrument should stand out, when the tempo should be slowed, and how the overall composition forms a specific experience for the listener.
A similar role can be found in the creative process involving AI.
A creator may no longer produce every element directly.
Some visuals, text, or alternative ideas may come from the machine. Others stem from personal experience, cultural references, or discussions with other humans.
However, the creator remains responsible for connecting these various elements into a work that has purpose and meaning.
Thus, creativity is not solely determined by how many elements of a work originate from one's own mind.
Creativity is also reflected through the ability to direct, select, connect, and give meaning to the various possibilities available.
This role becomes increasingly important because not everything that can be technically produced is worth realizing.
A work has social, cultural, and ethical contexts that cannot be ignored.
Creators need to consider who their work is targeted at, what message is to be conveyed, what values are carried, and the consequences that may arise when the work is published.
AI can help provide various alternatives, but humans must still take responsibility for the decisions made in using the results.
Therefore, the issue of creativity in the AI era is not only related to the technology's ability to produce works that increasingly resemble human creations.
A more fundamental challenge arises when humans begin to surrender too many creative decisions to machines.
When someone accepts every AI result without questioning its relevance, quality, context, and consequences, the creative process risks losing its most important element.
That element is the human ability to doubt, consider, choose, take a position, and build meaning.
AI can help accelerate work and expand possibilities. However, production speed is not always in line with the depth of an idea.
Likewise, a multitude of alternatives does not automatically produce a better work.
Meaningful work still requires sensitivity in understanding human experience and the social reality that underlies it.
Ultimately, the development of AI does not have to be understood as the end of human creativity.
On the contrary, this technology actually encourages changes in how creativity is understood and practiced.
If previously attention was directed more toward the ability to create something new, now the ability to judge, determine direction, and provide meaning is becoming increasingly important.
Herein lies a paradox.
AI, which seems to challenge the human position as creator, actually helps reveal the reality that creativity has never truly worked alone from the beginning.
Creativity always grows through the relationship between humans, experience, culture, technology, and the social environment.
Therefore, the most important question in the AI era may no longer be whether machines are capable of being as creative as humans.
The more fundamental question is whether humans are still willing to carry out the most difficult part of their own creativity: thinking critically, making choices, and taking responsibility for the meaning of what they create.
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