Can AI Get Stuck in Creative Blocks?

It’s been almost a month that I was struggling with what they call as “a writer’s block”. I was ranting about it last night to a friend and suddenly, time stopped moving as I drowned in a sea of unexplored questions.

Why do I have this creative block? What does it even mean to be “creative”? Are non-human animals “creative” too? What’s the relationship between Intelligence, Consciousness, and Creativity? Can AI get stuck into creative blocks?

So let’s unwrap it all step by step!

“Creativity” by definition is “the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.”

Contrary to functionalist ideologies, creativity is actually a fundamental need for human beings.

But does that mean, non-human animals need to be creative too?

Creativity in non-human animals is usually seen as adaptive strategies rather than purely aesthetic or discretionary traits. This means that it is also very closely related to survival and reproductive advantages. So in short, creativity is life for non-human animals.

Neophilia (a tendency to like new things) drives curiosity and motivation for exploration is a critical component of creative behavior. According to studies, cats and dogs (especially Brittanys) are highly neophilic.

But can any intelligent or conscious being be creative?

While there’s a little agreement on whether intelligence is the emergent property consciousness or vice versa, creativity remains universal.

The manifestation of creativity into a perceivable reality is fundamental necessity for the expression of creativity.

Intelligence is a general mental ability for reasoning, problem solving, and learning, and therefore, is usually manifested into a perceivable reality. So any intelligent entity has the potential to exhibit creative traits.

However, consciousness can still exist without being manifested into a perceivable reality. Philosophers like Leibniz and Spinoza were main proponents of mind-independent consciousness. Panpsychism also remains a major advocate for the same. Therefore, any conscious entity can or cannot be creative depending on the school of thought take into account.

So let’s leave consciousness out of the equation for now.

If Artificial Intelligence can be creative, then can it also “experience” “creative blocks”?

But before that, why do people have creative blocks?

Most common reasons for creative blocks are:

1. Being Overwhelmed

2. Anxiety

3. Exhaustion

4. Perfectionism

5. Mental Health Challenges

Unless we anthropomorphize AI aggressively, it doesn’t hold the capacity to run into challenges faced as a consequence of experiencing emotions.

But perfectionism and exhaustion can still happen independent of emotional capacity.

Most GenAI models (especially LLMs and Diffusion Models) can be prompted to not output a result unless the conditions for perfectionism are met. Similarly, a parallel of exhaustion can be compute-shortage and server overloads.

However, whether these conditions can be called real creative blocks remains in question. I would call them so because:

• Just like the prompting for AI models, we can also choose what we consume to a great extent.

• And the way one can manage compute and resources better, we can be smart with using the little time we have in this lifetime.

On a ending note, one thing that remains constant is AI lacks free will (artificial autonomy is programmed), maybe we don’t in an “absolute” sense.

I’m curious about your thoughts on intuitive and learned creativity.

Do you think creativity always needs to be intuitive or original? Or it wouldn’t matter to you if it is a learned behavior as long as it gets the job done?

Let’s chat on X or LinkedIn!