Physics

Sociology

Archaeology

Pure mathematics

Mathematics

Social science

Computational creativity

Multimedia

History

Creativity

Image (mathematics)

Optics

Epistemology

Philosophy

Conceptual framework

Political science

Artificial intelligence

Psychology

Focus (optics)

Mainstream

Context (archaeology)

Computer science

Field (mathematics)

Phenomenon

Social psychology

Text-guided synthesis of images has made a giant leap towards becoming a mainstream phenomenon. With text-to-image generation systems, anybody can create digital images and artworks. This provokes the question of whether text-to-image generation is creative. This paper expounds on the nature of human creativity involved in text-to-image art (so-called "AI art") with a specific focus on the practice of prompt engineering. The paper argues that the current product-centered view of creativity falls short in the context of text-to-image generation. A case exemplifying this shortcoming is provided and the importance of online communities for the creative ecosystem of text-to-image art is highlighted. The paper provides a high-level summary of this online ecosystem drawing on Rhodes' conceptual four P model of creativity. Challenges for evaluating the creativity of text-to-image generation and opportunities for research on text-to-image generation in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) are discussed.

The Creativity of Text-to-Image Generation