From Creation to Co-Creation: Philosophical Perspectives on Human and Machine Creativity

Is AI a genius, or is it rather a creative agent? The British artist Harold Cohen thought that a computer program might represent knowledge that leads to the act of making art. In 1973, he began developing AARON, a computer program designed to autonomously produce paintings and drawings. This project represents an early experiment in computational creativity. The emergence of such an autonomous generative system raised fundamental questions about the nature of art. The creative process resulted in tangible outcomes, suggesting that machines are capable of generating and representing in ways that appear analogous to artistic practice. But what do these creations represent? Furthermore, what constitutes creativity and artistic creation? In this paper, I explore the dimensions of human and machine creativity and the relationship between them, with the aim of creating a philosophical and conceptual framework that highlights their similarities, differences, and possible intersections, as well as the socio-cultural implications of machine creativity in the age of human-machine co-creativity.