Generative AI and Creativity: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract: Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly used to support a wide range of human tasks, yet empirical evidence on its effect on creativity remains scattered. Can GenAI generate ideas that are creative? To what extent can it support humans in generating ideas that are both creative and diverse? In this study, we conduct a meta-analysis to evaluate the effect of GenAI on the performance in creative tasks. For this, we first perform a systematic literature search, based on which we identify n = 28 relevant studies (m = 8214 participants) for inclusion in our meta-analysis. We then compute standardized effect sizes based on Hedges' g. We compare different outcomes: (i) how creative GenAI is; (ii) how creative humans augmented by GenAI are; and (iii) the diversity of ideas by humans augmented by GenAI. Our results show no significant difference in creative performance between GenAI and humans (g = -0.05), while humans collaborating with GenAI significantly outperform those working without assistance (g = 0.27). However, GenAI has a significant negative effect on the diversity of ideas for such collaborations between humans and GenAI (g = -0.86). We further analyze heterogeneity across different GenAI models (e.g., GPT-3.5, GPT-4), different tasks (e.g., creative writing, ideation, divergent thinking), and different participant populations (e.g., laypeople, business, academia). Overall, our results position GenAI as an augmentative tool that can support, rather than replace, human creativity-particularly in tasks benefiting from ideation support.