Beyond the author: Artificial intelligence, creative writing and intellectual emancipation

Beyond the author: Artificial intelligence, creative writing and intellectual emancipation

By Dr Jack Tsao (HKU), Dr Collier Nogues (CUHK)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly refining creativity and creative production. This recent study dives into how university students in Hong Kong are using AI tools, known as Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), for creative writing and graphic storytelling. Inspired by Jacques Rancière’s ideas about everyone having equal intelligence and the right to be creative the research shows how students are quickly becoming fluent in the language of AI, using these tools to twist, bend, and reimagine what it means to be an author. They’re sidelining the traditional idea of a lone writer, instead seeing AI as a co-creator that sparks new ideas and stories.

By letting students lead their learning with AI, the study found that students might have more freedom to be creative and think for themselves. This could lead to a more equal classroom where everyone gets to share their ideas. The research tells us that working with AI can help understand what it means to be creative. The result of this study reshapes our understanding of creativity in the digital age, suggesting that AI could be the key to unlocking innovative approaches to empower students and increase engagement in the classroom, all while honing critical and creative thinking skills.

This study was based on the research project Creative Writing in the Age of Big Data | HKU Common Core, a collaboration between HKU Common Core and CUHK Department of English.

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Tsao, J., & Nogues, C. (2024). Beyond the author: Artificial intelligence, creative writing and intellectual emancipation. Poetics, 102, 101865. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2024.101865