Aesthetic Experience and Educational Value in Co-creating Art with Generative AI: Evidence from a Survey of Young Learners

2025-09-11

AI Summary

This study investigates the aesthetic experiences and educational implications of generative AI integration for young learners and art students, focusing on how human–AI collaboration reconfigures authorship, notions of originality, process logic, and aesthetic judgment. Employing a mixed-methods approach, it combines qualitative analysis of 112 survey responses with generative AI–mediated art practice and theoretical synthesis grounded in Deweyan aesthetics, postphenomenology, and actor-network theory, yielding the “critical co-creation” framework. Findings reveal that creators dynamically shift among director, interlocutor, and explorer roles, sustaining an iterative workflow centered on critical interpretation. Pedagogically, emphasis shifts toward cultivating critical judgment, cross-modal conceptualization, and metareflective literacy. The framework advances a theoretically rigorous yet pragmatically viable paradigm for art education in the AI era, bridging philosophical inquiry with situated creative practice.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General Intelligence

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic ramifications for generative AI infrastructure and applications
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

This study investigates the aesthetic experience and educational value of collaborative artmaking with generative artificial intelligence (AI) among young learners and art students. Based on a survey of 112 participants, we examine how human creators renegotiate their roles, how conventional notions of originality are challenged, how the creative process is transformed, and how aesthetic judgment is formed in human--AI co-creation. Empirically, participants generally view AI as a partner that stimulates ideation and expands creative boundaries rather than a passive tool, while simultaneously voicing concerns about stylistic homogenization and the erosion of traditional authorship. Theoretically, we synthesize Dewey's aesthetics of experience, Ihde's postphenomenology, and actor--network theory (ANT) into a single analytical framework to unpack the dynamics between human creators and AI as a non-human actant. Findings indicate (i) a fluid subjectivity in which creators shift across multiple stances (director, dialogic partner, discoverer); (ii) an iterative, dialogic workflow (intent--generate--select--refine) that centers critical interpretation; and (iii) an educational value shift from technical skill training toward higher-order competencies such as critical judgment, cross-modal ideation, and reflexivity. We argue that arts education should cultivate a emph{critical co-creation} stance toward technology, guiding learners to collaborate with AI while preserving human distinctiveness in concept formation, judgment, and meaning-making.

Problem

• Investigating aesthetic experience in human-AI collaborative artmaking
• Examining how AI challenges originality and transforms creative processes
• Assessing educational value shifts from technical skills to critical competencies

Innovation

• Human-AI collaborative artmaking as creative partnership
• Analytical framework combining Dewey, Ihde and ANT
• Iterative dialogic workflow with critical interpretation