AI Usage Enhances Creative Performance but Leads to Biased Estimates of One’s and Others Creativity

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the creative industry. Much research and lay beliefs have documented the benefits of using AI in enhancing creative performance, but our work reveals a potential downside: biased estimates of one’s as well as others’ creative performance. Using an experimental design that includes three sequential creativity tasks, we first replicate that AI usage does lead to enhanced creative performance. Most importantly, we reveal AI usage leads participants to underestimate one’s and others’ creativity. Furthermore, the effect of AI usage on biased evaluations of others’ creativity remains significant even when participants were no longer using AI immediately after, and one week after the initial experiment. Finally, our findings supported the mediating role of lack of confidence between AI usage and others’ creativity. We hope our research stimulates future work to explore the research on AI usage and creativity.