Agentic Creative Intelligence : Designing With AI to Reclaim Human Agency

AI is accelerating creative production at an unprecedented scale. As creatives delegate more to generative systems, meaning erodes through our deteriorating expectations. Agentic Creative Intelligence responds to this crisis by arguing that creativity can be rejuvenated by configuring our relationships with agents.

AI is accelerating creative production at an unprecedented scale. As architects, designers, filmmakers, musicians, and writers delegate more to generative systems, meaning erodes through our deteriorating expectations. Creation requires effort, experimentation, and uncertainty. Relinquishing these embodied experiences risks the replacement of creators and the loss of our ways to understand ourselves, remain attuned to the world, and affirm our agency. Agentic Creative Intelligence responds to this crisis by arguing that creativity can be rejuvenated by configuring our relationships with agents. We propose intelligent intermediaries called dæmons to raise aesthetic awareness, extend engagement, adapt intention, and express influence. Together they converge into a Creative Council that enables a new chain of co-creation: practitioner, dæmon, agent. Grounded in the practices of iconic practitioners and drawing on Chinese philosophy, the book explores how these capacities can be sustained in speculative scenarios across seven creative disciplines. It then examines human agency where innovators, educators, and changemakers apply the framework for systemic change. We are in an agentic era, a new Pandæmonium of industry and intelligence, where creation is shared with non-humans. Agentic Creative Intelligence asks designers, innovators, and educators: will we proactively define our relationship between human and machine, or relinquish our agency for good?