Abstract

AI has displayed notable originality across the domains of art, science and gaming. But is it right to say that such machines are creative? This question is bound up with other challenging questions about the capacities of artificial systems. Human creativity typically involves some conscious experience of the creative project. If consciousness is necessary for creativity then a case could be made that these (presumably) unconscious machines are not really creative. I argue that there is no compelling case for thinking that consciousness is generally necessary for creativity. However, lessons learned from this discussion suggest that a more localised claim about aesthetic creativity has greater promise. I argue that consciousness is required for creativity in aesthetic tasks. If an AI lacks consciousness then it is incapable of aesthetic experience, and without aesthetic experience it cannot engage in aesthetic creative projects.