Nelson Zagalo

Creativity is not generating: it is stabilizing meaning

Nelson Zagalo is a Full Professor in the Department of Communication and Art at the University of Aveiro and Director of DigiMedia – Centre for Research in Digital Media and Interaction. His scientific work intersects digital media, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, narrative, and experience design. He has been developing research on human-AI mediation, agency, and the cognitive and cultural impacts of generative AI on processes of creation, learning, and communication.

This talk proposes a reflection on what we truly understand as creativity at a time when generative AI systems can produce, in seconds, a vast number of textual, visual, and sonic variations. It argues that generating novelty alone is not the same as creating. Creativity begins with openness to possibility, but it is ultimately realized through the ability to stabilize meaning—to select, shape, and define a direction. From this perspective, AI appears less as a substitute for human creativity and more as a revealer of its deeper nature: while machines expand the space of the possible, it remains up to humans to decide what is worth keeping, developing, and sharing.