Artificially Generated Friendships? On the Possibility of Co-creation in the Age of Generative AI

Abstract

This article speculatively explores possibilities for co-creation between humans and generative AI systems. Drawing on computational, new materialist, and posthumanist perspectives, it proposes an understanding of AIs not as deficient humans or superior tools, but as entities with distinctive cognitive capacities. The concept of friendship, reimagined through Derrida’s emphasis on difference rather than sameness, offers an additional constructive foundation for exploring these emergent relationships. Rather than demanding AI to replicate human consciousness, this approach examines how different cognitive processes might generate novel possibilities. By reframing difference as generative potential, new modes of collaborative practices open up, embracing tensions where human, non-human, and computational forms of agency intersect. The field of artistic research provides an effective framework for enacting these emergent forms of co-creation.