Humans vs. Chatbots Round One
AI is great at generating ideas, but your weird, brilliant brain is still what makes you indispensable.
AI wins the brainstorm—but not the breakthrough
Researchers from the University of Waterloo asked both humans and large language models (LLMs)—including ChatGPT, Copy.Ai, and others—to tackle the Alternate Uses Task, a classic test of divergent thinking—the ability to generate many varied ideas from a single prompt. Responses were rated across three dimensions:
Originality: How novel or rare is the idea?
Fluency: How many ideas were generated?
Semantic distance: How far did the ideas deviate from the object's normal context?
The Results
AI outperformed the average human in every category.
Chatbots won in all three creativity metrics—originality, fluency (number of ideas), and semantic distance—across each prompt.
It wasn’t even close: the chatbots generated ideas that were more original, more numerous, and more semantically “out there” than their human counterparts.
So—is the future of creativity robotic?
Not quite.
The Catch
When researchers looked at the single most original human idea for each prompt, something interesting happened: that top human idea consistently beat out all of the AI responses.
In other words, AI is reliably creative, but not brilliantly creative.
That’s a key distinction. The bots give you a solid B+ every time. But the flashes of genius? The poetic left turns? The deeply weird and specific? Still human.
Even after a correction to the original study (which had initially reported a slightly different outcome), the central finding remains: AI may match the average, but it hasn’t cracked exceptional.
The Future of Ideation
It means your job just got more interesting.
If you’re a marketer, strategist, or creative professional, here’s the takeaway:
Use AI for lift: LLMs are powerful tools for volume, variety, and jump-starting momentum.
Use your team for leap: Humans still bring the nuance, insight, and surprise that make ideas unforgettable.
You don’t have to choose between man and machine. You just have to know when to hand off the mic.
Try this
Next time you're in a creative rut, prompt an AI to do the Alternate Uses Task. Then riff off its answers—and notice where your own brain starts to dance.
Or better yet, take the most ridiculous bot-generated idea and ask: “How could I make this idea actually work?”
That’s where human ingenuity starts to shine.
Shine on,
The Playstorming Lab
“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”
Citation:
Weststrate, N. M., Scholer, A. A., Holdsworth, K. R., & Ross, R. M. (2023). Creativity in the age of AI: ChatGPT evaluated with the divergent thinking framework. Scientific Reports, 13, Article 14315. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40858-3