Creativity vs quality: why the distinction matters when evaluating computational creativity systems

The evaluation of computational creativity systems is increasingly becoming part of standard practice in computational creativity research, particularly with recent development in evaluation tools. One matter that can cause confusion, however, is in distinguishing between the concepts of creativity and quality/value. These two concepts are highly interrelated, to the point that it is difficult (and perhaps inappropriate) to define creativity without incorporat- ing quality judgements into that definition. Several examples exist, however, where creativity evaluation has been confused with quality judgments, leading to less grounded evaluative results. Many computational creativity projects aim to produce high quality results; this is a worthy research aim. If, however, the aim of a computational creativity research project is to make as creative a system as possible, then a more careful approach is needed that acknowledges and understands the differences - and also the overlaps - between creativity and quality. This paper critically investigates the concepts of creativity and quality (and how they are related). It offers warning examples showing the dangers of conflating the two concepts. These are followed by practical examples of how to incorporate value judgements into the evaluation of creativity of software, to further our overall pursuit of building more creative computational systems.