The Cyber-Creativity Process

Among the 7C’s model for creativity, as proposed by the Editor of this series Todd Lubart, the “C” of Creating represents the process through which the creativity phenomenon takes life. This book focuses on the creative process, involving the whole chain of events from focus conception, information gathering, idea generation, idea estimation, and implementation, by first of all defining creativity in a dynamic fashion, one that allows for creativity to exist even when the value of the process outcomes fails to be recognized, perhaps momentarily, or in the absence of creative products altogether. In treating this crucial subject, a key decision had to be made based on the historical moment we are witnessing: the come of age of artificial intelligence AQ1 (AI). For many years it was believed that AI would have been replacing routine jobs first, trusting that the more intellectually demanding and creative professions would remain the sole domain of human minds for several decades, or perhaps forever. The advent of Generative AI (Gen-AI) has changed this perspective dramatically. We now know that Gen-AI must be considered as a perfectly accredited actor in the creative process, so much so that it is today necessary for completeness to speak of cyber-creativity, and go deep into how human and machines can cooperate in the process. Therefore, at the end of 2023 I decided that the book would be devoted to an in- depth description and analysis of the cyber-creativity process, exploring several nuances that should show both resonance as well as departure from a purely human creative process. The structure of the book is as follows: Chapter 1 has an introductory nature, providing the reference theoretical basis for the rest of the book. It introduces the dynamic definition of creativity and the dynamic universal creative process, before moving on to describing the DA VINCI model for the cyber-creative process. Through a fully developed exercise, aided by the DA VINCI custom GPT, the reader is given the chance to follow step- by-step an example of co-creativity between a human and Gen-AI. This is followed by seven core chapters. Chapter 2 gives solid foundations on Gen-AI algorithms, in a way that should be accessible to non-expert readers, but without sacrificing depth. Chapters 3 to 7 concentrate their focus on very important cyber-creative application fields: education, journalism, design, fashion, and music, respectively. Chapter 8 dwells on ethical and legal aspect of Gen-AI, a crucial topic for these algorithms that are trained on previously generated creative products, begging the question of intellectual property attribution. Finally, Chap. 9 provides a rather unusual form of conclusion: it is an exercise in future thinking, imagining we live in the year 2100 and by chance we encounter the very book that is in your hands: what could our future successors draw out of it? I wish to thank all the chapters co-authors, the series editor Todd Lubart, as well as my collaborator Irene Coletto for their help in putting this work together as quickly as possible, a necessity given the fast pace of evolution of Gen-AI technology. It is my hope that this book can serve as a source of inspiration for new forms of creativity, always remembering that alignment with human values should be held at the highest possible rank, and that the creative process is an experience that can produce long-lasting happiness in terms of coherence with our past, significance of our present, and purpose of our future.