Artistic Individuality in Human–AI Co-Creation

This chapter explores the role of individuality and personalization in collaborations between human composers and generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, with a particular focus on contemporary composition. Contrary to the common view of AI as a tool for automation or productivity, this work highlights why artistic individuality poses a unique challenge for generative AI and proposes ways in which such systems can support the creation of highly personal artistic concepts. The findings are based on practical experiments conducted within real-world artistic projects involving composition students from four music universities in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The results show that mere imitation (such as generating music in a historical style) was not sufficient for artistic acceptance. Composers responded more strongly when the AI's role was conceptually framed and technically adjusted to fit their individual approach. Identification with the outcome depended less on the generated material than on where and how composers intervened, and how clearly they could position the AI within their artistic vision.