Advances in artificial intelligence have fueled a growing belief that machines are on the verge of matching, or even surpassing, human creativity. Large language models can now write poems, spin short stories, and generate clever wordplay in seconds. To many, these outputs feel creative enough to blur the line between human imagination and machine-generated language.
However, a new large-scale empirical study suggests that while today’s most advanced AI systems can rival the average human on certain creativity measures, they still fall short of the most creative minds—and that gap remains significant.
The research, published in Scientific Reports, offers one of the most comprehensive head-to-head comparisons yet between human creativity and large language models (LLMs).
By benchmarking multiple AI systems against a dataset of 100,000 human participants, the study moves the conversation beyond anecdotes and viral examples, replacing speculation with quantitative evidence.
“Our study shows that some AI systems based on large language models can now outperform average human creativity on well-defined tasks,” co-author and Professor at the University of Montreal, Dr. Karim Jerbi, said in a press release. “This result may be surprising — even unsettling — but our study also highlights an equally important observation: even the best AI systems still fall short of the levels reached by the most creative humans.”
Hellbound and Down 