Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The rapid diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into creative disciplines has reframed the studio as a space of human–machine collaboration, nowhere more consequentially than in textile print-design education, where ideation, motif creation, and print-making are increasingly mediated by text-to-image systems. This paper develops and argues a conceptual framework that distinguishes two fundamentally different modes of student engagement with GenAI the tool as a creative partner that augments imagination and craft, versus the tool as a creative proxy that substitutes for them and applies this distinction to the Pakistani higher-education context on the eve of the Higher Education Commission’s mandatory artificial-intelligence curriculum (Fall 2026) and the National Artificial Intelligence Policy 2025. Synthesising recent empirical evidence (2024–2026) through the lens of mixed-initiative co-creativity and hybrid-intelligence theory, the study shows that GenAI produces a consistent double-edged effect: it enhances ideation speed, idea fluency, output volume, and novice confidence, while simultaneously depressing felt originality, ownership, independent skill formation, and collective design diversity. Industry data indicate that generative tools can compress the concept-to-approval cycle by roughly two-thirds and multiply design output several-fold, yet they generate unstructured raster outputs that still require substantial human authorship. Against this backdrop, the paper proposes a five-construct Creative-Partner competency model creative agency, domain knowledge, imagination, aesthetic taste, and critical judgment and maps GenAI affordances and risks across the five stages of the textile-design pipeline. It advances a mixed-methods research agenda and a set of pedagogical and policy recommendations designed to keep Pakistani design students on an augmentation rather than a dependence trajectory. The contribution is a locally grounded, theoretically anchored account of how GenAI can be integrated into creative-craft education without eroding the originality that education exists to cultivate. Keywords: Generative Ai; Co-Creativity; Textile Print Design; Design Education; Creativity; Human–Ai Collaboration; Pakistan; Higher Education.
Source: Journal for Current Sign
Author: Sana Campwala
Institution: Indus University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7220828215