Will AI Ever Outrun Human Creativity? New Study Says There's a Ceiling — Experts Disagree

A recent paper published Nov. 11 in the Journal of Creative Behavior argues that the apparent creativity of artificial intelligence (AI) is constrained by definable mathematical limits. David Cropley, a professor of engineering innovation at the University of South Australia and the study’s sole author, concludes that AI’s creative output sits roughly between amateur and professional human levels and, under current design principles, cannot surpass the most talented human creators.

What Cropley Found

Cropley evaluated outputs from large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT, against a widely used Standard Definition of Creativity. He found that while AI can convincingly mimic creative behavior, its true creative capacity is capped at about the level of an average person and cannot, as currently designed, reach expert or professional standards. According to the paper and accompanying statement, this limit is mathematical rather than merely practical.

“Many people think that because ChatGPT can generate stories, poems or images, that it must be creative. But generating something is not the same as being creative,”

Cropley also noted a related psychological finding: roughly 60% of people score below average on standard creativity measures, so many will naturally judge LLM outputs as creative even when skilled human creators detect shortcomings.

Why Experts Disagree

Reaction among practitioners and researchers is divided. Some stress that creativity requires agency, lived experience and willingness to take personal risks — qualities AI lacks. Others argue that creativity is fundamentally combinatorial and that AI’s scale and data access give it a real advantage.

Arguments Emphasizing Human Agency

Jack Shaw of Shawfire Media, who uses LLMs to test marketing content, says if creativity means reframing briefs, setting cultural cues and taking risky responsibility for novel choices, humans lead: “Models synthesize patterns optimized for likelihood; they do not carry intent, lived context, or stakes, and they do not originate goals.”

Alesha Brown, CEO of Fruition Publishing Concierge Services and Alesha Brown Productions, highlighted the role of lived experience: “No LLM wakes up with a childhood trauma, a cultural lineage, or a moral conflict and decides, ‘I’m going to make a film or write a book that could cost me relationships but might free other people.’ That willingness to risk reputation, income, or belonging for an idea is a big part of what we intuitively count as creativity.”

Arguments Emphasizing Combinatorics and Scale

By contrast, Gor Gasparyan of Passionate Agency says the idea of a strict mathematical ceiling relies on an old-fashioned definition of creativity that downplays novelty. In his practice, models produce keywords and thematic connections that are novel to human SEO experts about 80% of the time, leading to new content strategies.

Iliya Rybchin of Vorpal Hedge frames both human and machine creativity as recombining stored patterns under constraints: “Creativity is almost exclusively combinatorics. If creativity is the ability to connect unconnected dots, the entity with the most dots wins.”

James Lei, CEO of Sparrow, offers a pragmatic definition: creativity equals generation plus selection against a purpose. AI excels where quality is measurable and briefs anchor direction — for example, ad concepts, onboarding flows, contract clause options and musical motifs. Where AI struggles is long-horizon agenda-setting that draws on embodied context and cross-domain judgment.

Practical Takeaways

Many experts agree on one practical point: AI’s output depends heavily on human framing. Vague prompts often yield bland results, but tight briefs, iterative feedback and clear evaluation criteria let AI produce novel and useful options. As Amit Raj of The Links Guy put it, “Give it context, challenge it, refine it and debate with it, and creativity emerges.”

Paul DeMott, CTO at Helium SEO, noted that the definition of creativity keeps shifting as AI overcomes earlier criticisms: “Critics said AI lacked intent, then emotional richness, then originality. We redefine creativity whenever machines cross a previously assumed boundary.”

Conclusion

The debate is likely to continue because the outcome depends less on a single mathematical proof than on how we define creativity. If creativity is agency, moral risk and lived experience, AI remains far behind. If creativity is measured by novelty, usefulness and the ability to recombine vast amounts of information against constraints, AI may match or exceed humans in many practical domains. The nuance matters: AI is already a powerful creative tool in contexts with clear briefs and measurable goals, but the question of whether it can ever fully replicate the depth of top human creators remains unresolved.