AI creator tools aren't living up to their promise of unleashing human creativity. Instead, they're pushing us toward the "mediocre middle"—a zone where everything looks competent but nothing truly stands out.

Here's what's happening: AI helps beginners improve their work quality, but it potentially hurts their creative growth over time. Meanwhile, experienced creators can work faster with AI, but not necessarily better. Everyone ends up settling for "good enough."

Instead of maximizing what we can all do with our individual creativity, a lot of AI creator tools are raising the floor and lowering the ceiling of what’s possible.

What’s to blame? How AI works or the way the tools are designed? Yes.

But we can fix it.

What makes something creative?

To understand why AI is making us all mediocre, we need to understand what makes something creative in the first place. That’s tough to pin down. We know it when we see it but have a hard time putting it into words.

Researchers generally agree it combines two things: novelty and appropriateness. Is what you're making surprising? And does it work for the situation?

If you've created something both unexpected and effective, congratulations—that's creative success. If it's effective but predictable, it might be a bit boring (which is sometimes exactly what you want).

This framework also helps us understand AI's creative output. Wildly unpredictable and totally inappropriate? That's a hallucination. Something that looks the same as everything else but still manages to be wrong? That's slop.

Why AI gets stuck in the middle

The core issue is that AI isn't particularly good at novelty. Large language models prioritize common patterns over rare ones, so even when you ask for multiple options, they tend to overlap a bunch.

Research shows that when creators start from AI-generated ideas, their final work ends up remarkably similar to each other's. The AI gives us obvious solutions, and we don’t stray far. If your whole creative team uses AI the same way, your collective output loses diversity.

The mediocre middle gets wider.

How tools shape our creative thinking

If we want to empower creators with AI, we need to understand not just how the technology works, but how human creativity works.

Being creative activates the same reward pathways in our brains as a great meal (or recreational drugs). Creative activity supports our overall wellbeing—it's why humans have maintained their artistic side hustle since the first cave painting, and why 9–5 creators still pick up their tools on weekends.

But there's troubling evidence that using AI tools incorrectly can interfere with this natural motivation. We end up finding our work less engaging and less satisfying. In one study, participants who moved from AI-assisted tasks to working solo saw an 11% drop in intrinsic motivation and a 20% increase in boredom.

Wouldn’t it be sad if the joy of creating with our tools became a boring chore?

The creative sweet spot isn’t comfort

The current generation of AI tools hasn't been designed by creators, and what maximizes productivity doesn't always work for creativity.

When you're using an app to analyze data or refill a prescription, friction is the enemy. Most AI tools operate under this assumption—get users from idea to finished product as quickly as possible.

But when was the last time you heard an artist talking about how important being comfortable is to their creative process?

A little friction is good sometimes. Stretching your skills to meet new challenges is essential to the “flow state” creative folks are always chasing. When things become too easy, they stop being rewarding.

The key is ensuring the challenge matches the user's skill level. Creators should get enough AI assistance to boost their capabilities, while retaining enough creative struggle to foster personal growth.

Support multiple modes of creative expression

We also need to remember there are many ways to be creative. Sure, there's craft—the technical ability to use tools. But there's also vision (the ability to conceptualize compelling ideas), curation (selecting the right inspiration), and most importantly, message (what you're trying to communicate).

Consider where users can add creative touches beyond generation itself. Offer multiple input methods so creators can express ideas in ways that feel natural to them.

The more input creators have in the generative process, the more ownership they'll feel over the final product. Users need to feel like they've used your tool to make something, not just get something.

Design for iteration not perfection

One way we can create more space for individual creativity and foster a sense of ownership is by moving toward more iterative workflows.

Instead of trying to one-shot a finished product from a single prompt, create more collaboration between the tool and the user. Techniques that break complex tasks into smaller, structured steps increase AI output variety and reduce sameness. Offer multiple options and encourage feedback loops.

This approach helps users become more creative themselves. Research shows that users given multiple AI-generated options demonstrate greater creativity than those given just one. More importantly, this creates natural pauses where users can reflect on their creative progress, leading to higher creativity and cognitive engagement.

Working our way out of the middle

It's becoming clear that AI has the potential to change not just what we can make, but how we think about creativity itself. It’s a huge risk, a huge opportunity, and a huge responsibility for the people who make creator tools.

We need to understand and appreciate what’s special about creativity.

The future of AI creator tools isn’t one where anyone can make anything that looks like everything else. It's a world where anyone, regardless of starting skill level, can climb over the mediocre middle and share their individual creativity with the world.