Professor Nathaniel Barr Publishes on AI and Creativity
Dr. Nathaniel Barr has been contributing to a growing body of research exploring how artificial intelligence intersects with human creativity. Collaborating with Paul Seli of Duke University, his students, and other colleagues at institutions including Harvard and Cambridge, Barr has co-authored three recent publications in cognitive psychology journals that examine how AI-generated creative work is perceived and how human creativity interacts with AI-based tools.
The most recent paper, Beyond the Brush: Human versus Artificial Intelligence Creativity in the Realm of Generative Art, builds on prior work by investigating the role of expertise in AI-assisted creativity. The study compared the prompt-generation abilities of professional artists, novice humans, and AI (ChatGPT) and analyzed how their respective prompts influenced the creative quality of AI-generated art. Results showed that professional artists generated more semantically diverse prompts, leading to higher-rated artworks—outperforming both novices and AI. These findings suggest that human creativity remains both trainable and highly valued, even as AI tools become more sophisticated. [link]
This work follows Using AI to Generate Visual Art: Do Individual Differences in Creativity Predict AI-Assisted Art Quality?, which explored whether individual creativity influences the quality of AI-assisted art. The study found that while people with stronger divergent-thinking skills generated more creative prompts (and thus more creative AI-generated artwork), the effect size was relatively small, suggesting that AI tools can help democratize creative output to some degree.
Humans versus AI: Whether and Why We Prefer Human-Created Compared to AI-Created Artwork examined how people perceive AI-generated art. Despite all artworks being AI-generated, participants rated those labeled as “human-made” more favorably across various dimensions, such as beauty, profundity, and emotionality. This revealed a strong anthropocentric bias in how creative work is valued.
Together, these studies highlight both the impressive capabilities of AI in creative domains and the enduring significance of human artistic expertise. As AI continues to evolve, understanding these dynamics will be essential for shaping the future of human-AI collaboration in creative fields.
Citations:
Seli, P., Ragnhildstveit, A., Orwig, W., Bellaiche, L., Spooner, S., & Barr, N. (2025). Beyond the brush: Human versus artificial intelligence creativity in the realm of generative art. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.
Orwig, W., Bellaiche, L., Spooner, S., Vo, A., Baig, Z., Ragnhildstveit, A., Schacter, D.L., Barr, N., & Seli, P. (2024). Using AI to Generate Visual Art: Do Individual Differences in Creativity Predict AI-Assisted Art Quality?. Creativity Research Journal, 1-12.
Bellaiche, L., Shahi, R., Turpin, M. H., Ragnhildstveit, A., Sprockett, S., Barr, N., Christensen, A., & Seli, P. (2023). Humans versus AI: whether and why we prefer human-created compared to AI-created artwork. Cognitive research: principles and implications, 8(1), 42.
