Is AI Good or Bad for Creativity: How Generative AI is Transforming Human Ideation
December 10, 2025Generative AI is transforming the creative landscape, sparking both excitement and concern across industries. From screenwriting and music composition to product design and marketing, AI tools are increasingly being used to assist human ideation. But is this technological leap enhancing creativity or limiting it?
Serving, Not Replacing, Human Creativity
The World Economic Forum emphasizes that as we evolve technologically, AI must serve human creativity, not replace it. In their 2025 report, the Forum highlights the importance of collaboration between governments, labor organizations, and businesses to ensure AI technologies are deployed ethically and inclusively. This includes fostering environments where AI enhances human ingenuity rather than automating it.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney are already helping creators brainstorm ideas, refine drafts, and visualize concepts. These tools can challenge expertise bias, promote divergent thinking, and help users overcome creative blocks. According to the Harvard Business Review, teams using generative AI in ideation sessions produced significantly more original ideas and higher-rated concepts than those without AI assistance. Further, two recent surveys from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland reported that 82% of managers use generative AI to help them do their jobs faster.
“The decisions we make today about artificial intelligence will resonate globally, shaping not only the future of creative industries but also setting precedents for ethical practices in other sectors.” – World Economic Forum
Democratizing Innovation
One of the most promising aspects of generative AI is its ability to democratize creativity. In the workplace, employees who may not consider themselves creative can use AI to generate ideas, visualize prototypes, or write compelling content. This levels the playing field and encourages broader participation in innovation.
In government, AI is being used to crowdsource policy ideas and simulate outcomes. For example, some municipalities are experimenting with AI-driven platforms to gather public input on urban planning, lowering barriers to participation and making civic ideation more efficient.
On an individual level, people are using AI for all sorts of projects. According to a 2024 Adobe survey, 74% of creators said AI is improving their efficiency, while also empowering them to explore creative pursuits they might not have attempted otherwise. From this angle, AI doesn’t replace creativity; it reshapes how we access and express it.
Risks and Threats to Creativity
Despite its benefits, AI poses real risks to human creativity. Because AI lacks intuition and emotion, over-reliance on AI can lead to homogenized outputs, where originality and depth is sacrificed for efficiency. Moreover, there's a danger that AI could discourage creative risk-taking. If algorithms prioritize ideas based on past success or popularity, they may inadvertently suppress bold, unconventional thinking. This is especially concerning in industries like journalism, filmmaking, and design, where innovation often comes from challenging norms.
Additionally, AI systems rely on large amounts of data from user inputs, training datasets, and contextual information to generate responses or perform tasks. These systems often identify statistical patterns and relationships within the data rather than forming original ideas or independent thoughts. When AI produces what appears to be a creative output—such as a poem, image, or concept—it is, in fact, synthesizing and recombining existing patterns and examples it has learned from prior data. Because AI lacks consciousness, intent, and personal experience, its outputs are arguably not genuinely creative but are instead derivative reflections of the information it has processed.
This reliance on existing data raises significant concerns about copyright infringement and idea ownership. Since AI systems generate content based on patterns learned from vast datasets—often containing copyrighted material—their outputs may unintentionally reproduce or closely imitate protected works. This blurs the line between inspiration and duplication, making it difficult to determine who owns the rights to AI-generated creations. As a result, legal and ethical debates continue to emerge around whether AI-generated material can be considered creative or original, how to attribute credit fairly, and how to protect the intellectual property of human artists, writers, and innovators in an age of machine-produced content.
Another concern is the erosion of creative skills. Just as calculators changed how we approach arithmetic, generative AI could shift how we develop and value creative abilities. If AI handles the ideation process, future generations, theoretically, could lose the capacity to think creatively without it.
The Future of AI in Creative Ventures
Looking ahead, the key lies in balance. AI should be seen as a collaborative or supportive tool rather than a competitor or replacement for original thought and creative ideation. Organizations must invest in training and policies that help employees use AI responsibly and not overly rely on it. Educational institutions should teach students how to harness AI tools while nurturing their own imaginative capacities.
The risk-to-reward ratio of AI in creativity depends largely on how it's implemented. When used thoughtfully, AI can elevate human ideation to new heights. When misused, it can flatten the unpredictability, emotion, and humanity that makes creativity so powerful.
Artificial Intelligence at Capitol Tech
At Capitol Technology University, our undergraduate and graduate programs in Artificial Intelligence—including Maryland’s first-ever Bachelor of Science in AI—equip students with the technical skills, ethical foundations, and multidisciplinary insights needed to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape. Students are challenged to ensure that AI is a tool for enhancing—not replacing—the spark of human imagination.