An AI can invent entirely new languages. But is it creative?

Ongoing discussion, most recently on July, 2026, Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, centers on an AI tool built on large language models (LLMs) known as ConlangCrafter. To create a new language, ConlangCrafter first writes itself a language sketch or rulebook. It defines everything from the sounds the language contains to how words are arranged in a sentence and its grammatical rules. Then, a random-number generator nudges the AI toward unusual combinations found across the world’s languages, preventing it from falling back on familiar patterns. Using those rules, the AI invents words and translates English into the new language. It then checks whether its own translations obey the grammar it wrote. If they don’t, it revises the rulebook and tries again.
ConlangCrafter’s outputs “do look like real languages” and mark “an improvement over existing [conlanging] models,” says Joseph Windsor, a theoretical linguist at the University of Calgary, who was not involved in the study. But the languages “aren’t consistent enough to be usable at length,” he adds. And Windsor questions whether exploring and creating combinations within a predefined design space amounts to originality and creativity.
Source https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-can-invent-entirely-new-languages-it-creative
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