A new study published in the American journal Science Progress suggests that the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) may make it easier to create films, literature, music, and more. However, if the creative industry overly relies on AI to "tell stories," there may be a sense of uniformity in future works. Generative AI can transform simple text prompts into relatively complex music, text, images, videos, etc., but the impact of the widespread use of such tools on human creativity is still unknown. To understand the impact of generative AI on short story creation, researchers from institutions such as University College London recruited nearly 300 volunteers as "writers" to conduct an online study. These volunteers are not professional writers who make a living by creating. The researchers evaluated their innate creativity and then randomly divided them into three groups. All volunteers were asked to create an 8-sentence short story based on one of three randomly assigned topics: high seas exploration, jungle exploration, and extraterrestrial exploration. The degree of acceptance of generative AI assisted creation varies among the three groups of volunteers. The first group has no AI assistance; The other two groups can choose to use AI to obtain an initial 3-sentence idea; Among these two groups that allow the use of AI for creation, volunteers in one group can choose to receive up to 5 AI generated ideas. After the creation is completed, volunteers are asked to self evaluate their stories based on criteria such as novelty and emotional characteristics. In addition, 600 external reviewers evaluated these stories using the same criteria. Research shows that receiving generative AI assistance can help create more creative and interesting stories, especially among volunteers who were initially assessed as lacking creativity. For example, for volunteers who are inherently lacking in creativity, obtaining 5 AI provided ideas can increase the novelty of their stories by 10.7% and increase the interest of their stories by 22%. But overall, compared to the group without any AI assistance, the stories created by the AI assisted group look more similar because they rely too much on the story ideas provided by AI when creating. Researchers say that this is equivalent to creating a 'social dilemma': generative AI makes it easier for people to enter the writing field, and 'lowering the threshold is a good thing'. But if the overall level of artistic innovation decreases, it will be harmful. This study suggests that people must start thinking about how to use AI in their work to maximize benefits while maintaining their own thinking. (New Society)