# Towards A Diffractive Analysis of Prompt-Based Generative AI

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.01783 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01783/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 4 Mar 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Survey on the Evaluation of Generative Models in Music](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05104/) (2025)
- [From Fake Perfects to Conversational Imperfects: Exploring Image-Generative AI as a Boundary Object for Participatory Design of Public Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00949/) (2024)
- [Exploring the Needs of Practising Musicians in Co-Creative AI Through Co-Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09055/) (2025)
- [Are Semantic Networks Associated with Idea Originality in Artificial Creativity? A Comparison with Human Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02048/) (2026)
- [AttentionBender: Manipulating Cross-Attention in Video Diffusion Transformers as a Creative Probe](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20936/) (2026)
- [Mimetic Poet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11984/) (2024)
- [Dialogue with the Machine and Dialogue with the Art World: Evaluating Generative AI for Culturally-Situated Creativity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14077/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent developments in prompt-based generative AI has given rise to discourse surrounding the perceived ethical concerns, economic implications, and consequences for the future of cultural production. As generative imagery becomes pervasive in mainstream society, dominated primarily by emerging industry leaders, we encourage that the role of the CHI community be one of inquiry; to investigate the numerous ways in which generative AI has the potential to, and already is, augmenting human creativity. In this paper, we conducted a diffractive analysis exploring the potential role of prompt-based interfaces in artists' creative practice. Over a two week period, seven visual artists were given access to a personalised instance of Stable Diffusion, fine-tuned on a dataset of their work. In the following diffractive analysis, we identified two dominant modes adopted by participants, AI for ideation, and AI for production. We furthermore present a number of ethical design considerations for the future development of generative AI interfaces.