Creativity

Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

Genesis 2:19-20 (English Standard Version)

The creativity and ingenuity of humanity is a thread that runs through the entirety of Scripture. As seen in our passage in Genesis, Adam is a creative being right from the start. The first task given to him by God is the creative naming of the animals. Likewise, the second recorded sin was a creative, albeit demonstrably evil, solution to a problem that Cain faced. We frequently see creativity used in both positive and negative ways throughout Scripture, but it is only leveraged by humans. No other animal or part of creation possesses this specific ability. It seems to be uniquely human.

Over the last couple of years, we have seen some of the outputs of advanced AI models grow in their complexity and “creativity”. Image generation initially struggled to model human faces and hands. It struggled with repetitiveness in landscape imagery, and could not reliably generate useful outputs that included any form of text. Now, a couple of years on, these models are built into our AI experience. Every major AI product today includes some form of image generation, and these images are good. Faces and hands look near perfect. Landscape imagery is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Logos and branding can be done reliably by AI without misspelling or otherwise damaging the text in the images.

Furthermore, these images are unique. You cannot “reverse-image” search an AI generated photo and find an exact match. This “creativity” has extended into video generation as well, and the Adobe software suite now advertises its ability to widen shots with AI generated video. None of this even mentions the remarkable prescience of AI generated text, that rivals well-written authors and can edit and reformat text with a remarkable degree of skill.

This all begs the question, can AI be truly creative? This is an aspect of creation that has historically been unique to humanity. To answer this, we must first explore what constitutes "creativity" in this context. Sure, a spider crafts a web in a somewhat creative way, but those webs are always similar to other webs, as if they all follow the same pattern but adapt to work in different environments.

Within this discussion is hidden an important question. What is creativity, really? As I’ve processed through this, I find that there are two distinguishing features of human creativity that separate it from both animals and computing systems.

The first of these is the concept of initiative. The spider’s creativity is rooted in its instinctual need to catch food. So far as we know, a spider does not awaken and decide arbitrarily that it will build a web. It does so out of a unique, God-given instinct. Likewise, a beaver does not build a dam for the sake of building a dam, but rather does so because that is the instinctual need of a beaver. While spider webs and beaver dams are undoubtedly impressive, and depending on your perspective, beautiful, they are artifacts of the instinct within their creators. Human creativity does not seem to root itself in instinct. Often art is created solely out of the desire to create art. The “starving artist” trope is a thing, but the “starving spider” trope is not, solely because one is done for the sake of the art with secondary consideration for living, and the other is done solely out of an instinctual need to find food.

Scripturally, we find that Adam names the animals in Genesis 2, not because of an instinct to do so, but because he was commanded to, again separating this from the instinct of those animals around him. Adam is commanded to name the animals, and therefore does so. One must assume that he could have chosen not to, and while he would have faced the consequences, it would not have been a violation of his instinct as a person. Likewise, this creation of names for animals out of whole cloth, requires a level of creativity beyond web weaving or dam building. In order for names to be effective, they must be unique. While we are not told what the animals were named, it is logical to assume that they were not all named the same thing, or even variations of the same thing because we have such varied names for animals today.

This first feature distinguishes human creativity from that of animals. We create not out of instinct, but out of a desire to create just as our Creator made all that is out of a desire to create. This feature also distinguishes humanity from AI. While an AI system may create excellent work, it does so because that is what it has been programmed to do. In other words, the creativity of generative AI is an instinct, not done for its own sake but because it must.

The second distinguishing feature that separates AI creativity from animals and humans is that of origin. The easiest way to break this concept down is to imagine a tree. At its root is God. Everything that God created within the first 6 days is a branch on that tree, connected to the root. AI is a creation of man, and is therefore not connected at the root. While all that exists is certainly a part of God’s creation, God has given humanity purview to create on his own. Often, man has used that creative ability to do things that are abhorrent to God. We would not argue that the idols made in ancient times were direct creations of God, for God is not the author of evil. Thus, man’s creations are a part of the larger created order, but under God’s direction are created by man. AI is one such creation.

From this concept, we can derive that man’s creativity, along with the apparent creativity of the animals, is rooted in God’s own creative act. AI’s creativity however is rooted in man’s creativity, and is thus a reflection first of man. God granted man a single method of passing on His image, and AI model training was not that method. Thus, AI’s apparent creativity is not creativity, but rather a reflection of man’s creativity. We can trivially prove this by noting that AI has yet to create a new form of art. It merely generates images that reflect ideas and concepts already explored by human artists rather than creating entirely new artistic paradigms.

AI can do some awesome things. It can create seemingly new ideas, images, and videos. While these creations make modern AI a useful tool, it does not place it on the same level as humanity nor does it mean that AI can be creative on its own. AI, just like every tool before it, is a creation of man that cannot rival the creations of the Almighty.

If you found this essay valuable, you might also find the first reflection in this series, on whether people of faith should pay attention to AI helpful. Additionally, I have written a basic primer on AI in 2025 that might be helpful as well. God bless!