Deepening ideas vs. exploring new ones: AI strategy effects in human-AI creative collaboration.

ABSTRACT: As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly participates in creative processes, designing effective human-AI collaboration is crucial. This study addresses a fundamental question: Should an AI partner prioritize deepening existing ideas (exploitation) or diversifying the creative space (exploration)? We investigated this through a controlled experiment with 148 participants, comparing two AI strategies based on March's exploration-exploitation framework. Using a turn-based brainstorming system on the topic of "how to increase café sales," we measured each AI strategy's impact on human trust and idea adoption. Contrary to traditional creativity research that emphasizes divergence, our findings show that the convergent deepening strategy significantly outperformed the diversification approa

SUBMITTER: Komura K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12779158 | biostudies-literature | 2026

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature