PONE-D-25-40481Deepening Ideas vs. Exploring New Ones: AI Strategy Effects in Human-AI Creative CollaborationPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Komura,

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Md. Rabiul Awal

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Assistant Professor in Management

Bangladesh army University of science and Technology

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Reviewer #1:

Reviewer #2:

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The scope of the study is limited. It only focuses on a specific task (brainstorming for increasing cafe sales), which might not generalize to other creative tasks or contexts. No tests for the implications for varied domains

No long-term effects are addressed; only the experiment is conducted in a single session, limiting insights into the long-term dynamics of human-AI collaboration. Long-term effects and the evolution of trust over time are not addressed.

Only homogeneous culture is discussed; no cross-cultural differences are discussed

Reviewer #2: The study investigates human-AI co-creativity and how an AI like GPT-4.1 can play a supportive role in human idea generation. The authors compare two AI strategies: exploration (finding new ideas) and exploitation (deepening of ideas) and analyze which strategy leads to higher trust in the AI-collaborative partner and higher idea adoption.

The choice of the exploration-exploitation theory as a theoretical foundation is very well suited for this research and positioned neatly in relation to creative ideation. The authors further refer to highly relevant theories in creativity research (Guilford, Mednick, Finke) and build a deepened framework for the study at hand.

The methods chosen are very well suited for answering the research questions. Especially the choice of putting new ideas on a visual grit horizontally (indicating new idea exploration) or vertically (indicating deepening of an old idea) allows the participants to approach the task in an intuitive approach.

Furthermore, the research questions are well formed to explore the research interests, and the limitations and future avenues for research are discussed critically and insightfully.

I only have a few comments that I hope the authors can clear up in a revised version of their manuscript.

Comments:

Line 270: “Each cell in the 15×15 grid space can contain a maximum of one idea (in a sticky note format). This constraint is intended to encourage participants to engage in strategic spatial placement and stimulate creative thinking”.

Participants are encouraged to do so, but were they also explicitly instructed to do strategic planning? Were they given examples and able to get familiar with the design through a mock example?

Lines 280-281: “In the experiment, the human and the AI each generated 20 ideas, creating a total of up to 40 ideas.”

Did they have to come up with exactly 20 ideas each? Or if they ran out of ideas before that they could finish early? Was there a time limit to how long they were allowed to think for each idea? It sounds as if they were required to write exactly 20 ideas (as it is also mentioned that their progress is tracked on a progress bar), but then saying “a total of up to 40 ideas” sounds as if it could be less than 40 ideas. Same at line 383: “maximum total of 40 ideas” which sounds as if it could be less.

Line 309: In the deepening-ideas condition it says “the parent idea to be deepened”. Does the parent idea only refer to the human original idea? Or can the AI also deepen a response that it gave by itself in response to the human original idea? If the human participant wrote a new idea in response to the AI deepened idea, will the AI deepen the first original human idea further or switch to the new human idea and deepen or expand this further?

Also, it is a valid choice to stop deepening an idea after 9 instances of an expansion - but does the limit of 9 refer to the number of answers the AI can give or in total? So if the humans themselves have already written 5 ideas in that specific column, will the AI only deepen this category 4 more times, or another 9 times?

Line 543: “This study empirically validated two AI strategies”. Can you really say that the study “validated” these two strategies? Validation means that both strategies were proven as being correct, but the study at hand rather assesses and compares both strategies. “Validated” carries a very strong connotation of correctness which is not the research question here.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-25-40481R1Deepening Ideas vs. Exploring New Ones: AI Strategy Effects in Human-AI Creative CollaborationPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Komura,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. 

1. The manuscript presents interesting and timely insights into human–AI collaboration; however, to further strengthen the contribution, the authors should more explicitly address the role of human–AI collaboration in the development of human competencies. This aspect carries both theoretical and practical significance and would enrich the discussion on how AI can support—not only complement—human creative and cognitive capabilities. I recommend that the authors incorporate relevant perspectives from recent research on competence development in human–technology interactions . The following article offers a useful conceptual foundation https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-10-2023-0426. Integrating this dimension would enhance the theoretical depth of the manuscript and clarify the practical implications of designing AI systems that not only collaborate with humans but also help them learn, grow, and expand their capabilities. Please note that citation of this is entirely optional but we hope it will be helpful overall.

2. In the Practical Implications section, you stated that “the empirical results of this study provide concrete guidelines for the design of human–AI creative collaboration systems.” However, the manuscript does not offer specific, actionable guidance for different types of organizations. Please clarify which industries, sectors, or organizational contexts could directly benefit from your findings

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 16 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Katarzyna Piwowar-Sulej

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

1. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise. 

2. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: The authors have included all my suggestions and added more explanations about the experimental procedure and study design.

With this the manuscript has improved significantly. I consider it now fit for publication.

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Reviewer #2: No

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Deepening Ideas vs. Exploring New Ones: AI Strategy Effects in Human-AI Creative Collaboration

PONE-D-25-40481R2

Dear Dr. Komura,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Katarzyna Piwowar-Sulej

Academic Editor

PLOS One