The research, combining findings from four studies in diverse creative fields such as short-story writing and sustainability solutions, reveals a compelling dual effect of AI assistance on creativity. While AI improves the creativity of individuals, especially those with lower baseline creativity, it simultaneously reduces the diversity of ideas across groups, leading to more similar and less varied outcomes. Crucially, when AI is used during the early stages of ideation, it narrows creativity, but using AI only during idea selection preserves diversity comparable to human-only efforts. This suggests that human leadership in early creative tasks is essential to maintaining a broad range of innovative ideas. Practical strategies for organizations include keeping humans in charge of initial ideation, diversifying AI inputs by varying prompts and models, employing multi-agent AI systems to create varied outputs, and establishing mindful restrictions on AI use to preserve human creative skills. Ultimately, successful integration of AI into creative workflows depends on intentional design that leverages AI’s productivity while keeping human originality central to foster breakthrough innovation.
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