Pith Number

pith:SC26MHC4

pith:2026:SC26MHC4DZJVNRNKI2CINPYBCH

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

How Creatives Approach GenAI Image Generation: Tensions Between Structured Guidance, Self-Experimentation, and Creative Autonomy

Haidan Liu, Isabelle Kwan, Jeffrey Loverock, Nicholas Vincent, Parmit K Chilana, Taiga Okuma

Creatives using GenAI image tools often prefer self-experimentation over structured guidance because they believe the latter can limit creative autonomy even when it aids understanding.

arxiv:2605.10898 v2 · 2026-05-11 · cs.HC

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\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{SC26MHC4DZJVNRNKI2CINPYBCH}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

even when creatives described the guidance as helpful for understanding AI, many still preferred self-experimentation, feeling that guidance could limit their creativity.

C2weakest assumption

That the small interview sample (n=8) and probe study (n=17) plus self-reported survey data (n=159) sufficiently represent the broader population of artists and hobbyists using GenAI image tools without significant selection or social-desirability bias.

C3one line summary

Creatives prefer self-experimentation over structured guidance for GenAI image tools to preserve creative freedom, even when guidance aids AI literacy.

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-06-19T16:12:20.680637Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

90b5e61c5c1e5356c5aa468486bf0111c27189d6d9bc3e2f648f68a1dfd2aa83

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.10898 · arxiv_version: 2605.10898v2 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.10898 · pith_short_12: SC26MHC4DZJV · pith_short_16: SC26MHC4DZJVNRNK · pith_short_8: SC26MHC4

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/SC26MHC4DZJVNRNKI2CINPYBCH \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 90b5e61c5c1e5356c5aa468486bf0111c27189d6d9bc3e2f648f68a1dfd2aa83

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "f63cf10b725595c2d0704717c1cb760cd8f048ab84bb74e837b42fab5c6120d8",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "cs.HC",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-11T17:40:36Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "e7ad6bb0ec9ceba8bae2c4d6d350c96dc36907d4ebad6ae7131a5daeb208cb75"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.10898",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 2
  }
}