Testing creativity: Towards a processual understanding of GenAI image-making tasks

We argue that everyday creative tasks that involve generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) are tacitly performed within computational test environments that not only enable and constrain human agency but also shape the epistemic conditions that allow us to ascertain what constitutes creativity itself. Without making such taken-for-granted conditions explicit, society will remain unable to critique them. To make these conditions explicit, we combine elements of cultural anthropology, science and technology studies and the pragmatic sociology of critique to develop an alternative framework for describing such tasks processually as testing creativity . We then apply this framework to a case study of a university student’s use of GenAI to create an image based on digital ethnographic observations. Adapting descriptive categories from 20 th century experimental creativity tests like of fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality we draw attention to specific qualities of judgement exercised by the student as part of his performance of this everyday creative task. We show how GenAI-mediated creativity is a layered, processual activity, enabling more critical engagement with its entanglements and implications. By reframing creative tasks with GenAI as testing creativity, we open space for critique and re-description of the conditions under which digital creativity is enacted.