Performative creativity in the age of artificial intelligence: abduction as a mediating element between humans and machines
Abstract
This article presents a transdisciplinary theoretical review of creativity in the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI). Drawing on semiosis as a conceptual framework, it examines the transformations that these technologies introduce into contemporary processes of creation and meaning-making. The paper argues that creativity associated with generative AI does not reside exclusively in the outputs produced, but rather in the abductive process through which human users interpret, select, and assign meaning to those outputs based on their cultural and experiential backgrounds. From this perspective, AI can be understood as a semiotic extension that expands creative possibilities within human–machine co-creation dynamics. It is argued that (1) creativity in these contexts should be analyzed as a relational process between humans and AI assistants; (2) the attribution of creative value depends on sociocultural frameworks of evaluation; and (3) these interactions give rise to new hybrid creative practices. Within this paradigm, the concept of performative creativity and the Abductive Performative Creativity Model (CPA) are proposed as analytical tools for examining how creative meaning is configured within distributed agency dynamics.
KEYWORDS: performative creativity, generative artificial intelligence, human–AI co-creation, abduction, semiosis, computational creativity.
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