Too Late to be Creative? AI-Empowered Tools in Creative Processes

The present case study examines the product landscape of current AI-empowered co-creative tools. Specifically, I review literature in both creativity and HCI research and investigate how these tools support different stages in humans’ creative processes and how common challenges in human-AI interaction (HAII) are addressed. I find these AI-driven tools mostly support the generation and execution of ideas and are less involved in the early stages of co-creation. Moreover, HAII challenges identified in other fields receive little attention in the creative domain. Based on a synthetic analysis, I elaborate on how future tools can leverage the ”non-human” quality of AI to achieve innovation through a more human-centered, collaborative journey.