“Creativity and artistic teaching in the Digital Era: a phenomenological study on the impact of GAI on the learning process in university arts education”

The emergence of generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) has triggered a profound reflection on traditional pedagogical models, leading to a redefinition of the value of teachers and the development of new methodologies. The arts—spearhead of cultural and technological shifts—reaffirm themselves as a space for inquiry and experimentation with emerging imaginaries that society later adopts. Artist-teachers, whose practice integrates aesthetic exploration, prototype design, and teaching, are thus positioned to analyse in depth the effects of GAI on creative and learning processes.

This study explores how arts educators from all disciplines interpret the impact of GAI on the creativity and learning of university arts students. Based on 23 semi-structured interviews, an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was applied to identify emerging patterns of meaning. Participants were selected through convenience sampling, prioritizing extensive teaching-research experience, humanistic grounding, and a consolidated artistic career in active practice with a multidisciplinary outlook.

Teachers agree that GAI helps remove constraints that hinder creative drive and enables the representation of imagination with absolute freedom. However, skills requiring systematic training, repetition, error, and iterative correction are significantly weakened.

Freed from the obligation of usefulness, creativity in the arts derives its meaning from the creator’s perspective, imagination, and intentionality. Teachers, therefore, state that the main risk lies in the increasingly homogeneous gaze shaped by social media and a culture of immediacy—a tendency that poor use of GAI may intensify. 

Accordingly, teachers view GAI as a useful resource for delegating content delivery and mechanical tasks, allowing classroom time to focus on what the teacher contributes with greatest value: accompanying students in creative processes, fostering learning through failure, and guiding the search for meaning and specificity. Ultimately, “their personal experience as human beings in relation to what is at stake, and what is at stake in creation is the human conflict of existence”.