# TraitSpaces: Towards Interpretable Visual Creativity for Human-AI Co-Creation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24326 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24326/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 16 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08718/) (2021)
- [Large Language Models for Data Annotation and Synthesis: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13446/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Seeing Differently: Modeling Interpretive Perspectives in Computational Creativity using a Four-World Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28644/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce a psychologically grounded and artist-informed framework for modeling visual creativity across four domains: Inner, Outer, Imaginative, and Moral Worlds. Drawing on interviews with practicing artists and theories from psychology, we define 12 traits that capture affective, symbolic, cultural, and ethical dimensions of creativity.Using 20k artworks from the SemArt dataset, we annotate images with GPT 4.1 using detailed, theory-aligned prompts, and evaluate the learnability of these traits from CLIP image embeddings. Traits such as Environmental Dialogicity and Redemptive Arc are predicted with high reliability (R2 ≈ 0.64 - 0.68), while others like Memory Imprint remain challenging, highlighting the limits of purely visual encoding. Beyond technical metrics, we visualize a "creativity trait-space" and illustrate how it can support interpretable, trait-aware co-creation - e.g., sliding along a Redemptive Arc axis to explore works of adversity and renewal. By linking cultural-aesthetic insights with computational modeling, our work aims not to reduce creativity to numbers, but to offer shared language and interpretable tools for artists, researchers, and AI systems to collaborate meaningfully.