A Study of the Exploratory Creativity Performance Between Machine and Human Designers

Abstract

Exploratory creativity (E-creativity) is used to represent the creative performance behind the exploration process when establishing conceptual space. Researchers have attempted to build computational E-creativity models to help human generate more creative ideas or solutions. This trend sparks the discussion on whether the performance of machine can achieve a similar level to human beings. However, the performance gap of E-creativity between human beings and machine has not been fully studied. This study aims to investigate the E-creativity performance differences between machine and human designers. To be specific, a state-of-the-art model DALL·E is chosen as a representative of machines for generating E-creativity imagery and is compared to novice designers who are the representative for generating E-creativity imagery of humans. Expert designers are recruited as assessors to assess the creativity and E-creativity performance of the collected human and machine data. The experimental results reveal that the creativity level of humans is higher than that of machine. The E-creativity level of machine is higher than that of humans. The textual E-creativity performance is higher than the imagery E-creativity performance of humans while it is lower than the imagery E-creativity performance of machine. The results provide insights for supporting the development of more advanced E-creativity engines and corresponding evaluation methods.