Group-AI collaboration enhances creativity performance: The roles of perspective-taking and AI utilization strategies

ABSTRACTBackground: The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in educational research has prompted growing interest in how such tools might support collaborative knowledge construction and creative thinking. While most studies focus on individual-AI interaction, less is known about group-level cognitive and interactional processes when AI is integrated into shared problem-solving settings.Objectives: This study investigates how group collaboration with AI supports creativity-relevant processes in collaborative learning contexts and explores the psychological mechanisms that mediate this effect.Methods: Using a within-subject experimental design, 96 university students engaged in a scientific divergent application task under three collaboration modes: group-AI collaboration, individual-AI collaboration, and human-only group collaboration. The study adopted a mixed-method approach, combining behavioral coding of perspective-taking and AI utilization strategies with statistical modeling to examine mediation effects. Tasks were designed to simulate open-ended learning scenarios that emphasize ideation, problem-solving, and conceptual integration—core components of collaborative learning.Results and Conclusions: Group-AI collaboration led to the most creative outputs in terms of usefulness, originality, and quality. This effect was mediated by two key mechanisms: strategic use of AI as a generative and exploratory resource, and selective, high-quality integration of both peer and AI-generated ideas. While these findings stem from a controlled setting, they offer initial evidence that AI-supported group work may enrich collaborative ideation processes and hold promise for future instructional design and group-based learning practices.Keywordsartificial intelligence, group-AI collaborative innovation, perspective taking, AI utilization strategies