Interpretational Creativity in Generative AI: A Case from Persian Traditional Music

In this article, I introduce the concept of interpretational creativity (IC), a form of creativity in human artistic activity that has been neglected by discussions of AI creativity. IC, which I describe in relation to Persian traditional music and a few more art traditions, involves creating a new artwork that exhibits a novel relationship to a body of traditional content. Because IC is different from and orthogonal to other forms of creativity, specifically those discussed by Margaret A. Boden in relation to AI, I offer a new analysis of the capacity of generative AI systems to exhibit IC. Based on a technical understanding of how dominant generative AI models learn to produce artistic products, I argue that IC poses an acute challenge related to the need to master extensive cultural context and relationships that are not always descriptively articulable. Regarding the implications of my arguments for the broader problem of AI creativity, I argue that although that challenge can be considered as related to processing contextual information by AI systems, the problem, at a deeper level, concerns the lack of a capacity in AI to adopt a value-laden, cultural, and perspectival stance and to reflect on a tradition.