Chat-GPT4 can Enhance Creativity. But Human Ego Can Hamper its Potential

Generative AI (Gen-AI; e.g., Chat-GPT4) is promoted as a potent tool to augment human creativity. But research has not systematically examined Gen-AI’s capabilities in generating new advertising slogans, and whether human creators will readily accept such Gen-AI assistance. We investigated this in two pre-registered studies. In study 1, we found that advertising slogans by ChatGPT-4 were of significantly higher quality (more novel, meaningful and persuasive), but of lower diversity, than those by human creators. In Study 2, we found that Gen-AI assistance significantly enhanced the slogan quality for less creative individuals. However, the latter Gen-AI enhancement was not realized by egocentric creators (objectively less creative but self-reporting high subjective creativity). The egocentric creators also preferred their own lower quality slogans over the ones provided by Chat-GPT4. These findings show that while Gen-AI is efficacious in creative marketing tasks, its adoption and enhancement potential may be hindered by human ego.