AI's New Creativity: The Rise of G-creativity.
The Future of Creativity: How Generative AI Is Reshaping Brand Strategy.
The Three Types of Creativity
In The Creative Mind, Margaret Boden established two categories of creativity: P-creativity (Personal) and H-creativity (Historical). P-creativity occurs when an individual discovers something new to them, even if it is a well-established concept. For a person, learning algebra or playing a new musical chord is a moment of personal creative discovery. Conversely, H-creativity is the act of creating something entirely new to humanity, such as Archimedes’ principle of displacement. H-creativity is a revolutionary, paradigm-shifting event.
Generative AI can facilitate both. It can teach a user to play the ukulele (P-creativity) and help them compose a new song (H-creativity). However, this new song, while unique, is not a revolutionary leap. It is a new instance of an existing form, a creation with known properties.
This distinction is crucial for understanding the impact of AI.
Introducing G-creativity
Generative AI introduces a new middle ground: G-creativity, or Generic Creativity. The term is rooted in the word "genus," meaning "type." Generative AI models, trained on existing data, excel at creating new instances of established types. A prompt like “a glorious sunrise over a cityscape in the style of Picasso” asks the AI to mix and match known elements and styles to produce a unique, but fundamentally generic, output. The creative output is new, but its conceptual framework is not. This process of mixing and matching, of creating within predefined types, is what defines G-creativity.
For branding professionals, G-creativity represents a new frontier for consumer engagement. As consumers increasingly use generative AI for personal creative tasks, they enter a private, highly active cognitive state. During this process, they are receptive to brand interaction.
A brand could, for example, deliver a programmatic ad or valuable content that aligns with the user’s prompt, creating a powerful touchpoint within their creative workflow. This offers an opportunity for brands to participate in a consumer's creative process, from hotel bookings to professional projects.
The two-way interaction enabled by chatbots, for example, allows brands to listen to and respond to customers in a non-judgmental way, building trust and fulfilling brand promises in real time.
The Addictive Touchpoint of G-creativity
The potential for these touchpoints is the driving force behind the billions invested in generative AI by major tech companies. The act of creating with generative AI is both exciting and addictive. It is a competitive, self-directed activity that provides a sense of achievement but is accompanied by a subtle feeling of anxiety or fraudulence. Brands must understand this complex emotional landscape to integrate successfully.
As the current era of advert-free, "Beta" interfaces like ChatGPT and Bard comes to an end, access to these portals will become a high-value commodity. It will be expensive, but critical for brands to understand its worth.
Brands that are first to comprehend this new G-creativity marketplace will be able to capitalize on new opportunities, whether through sponsoring a generative AI competition, developing brand-specific AI portals, or creating social media campaigns that leverage G-creativity.
Bottom Line
The monetization of generative AI is inevitable.
Brands must prepare for this shift by understanding G-creativity and its associated touch-points to strategically engage with consumers in this evolving landscape.
