Learn With Our Experts: How does AI amplify human creativity

In this essay, Isabelle Mallet, Head of Innovation at Sanoma Learning, discusses AI, creativity, and its impact on education. Drawing from her experience in leading the content creation workstream across various teams, Isabelle reflects on the opportunities AI presents and how it can transform our ways of working.

This is the inaugural essay in our "Learn with Our Experts" series, where we invite specialists to #ShareViews on current trends in education. Our first guest writer, Isabelle Mallet, has been the Head of Innovation at Sanoma Learning since 2024. With over 20 years of experience in marketing, innovation methodologies, and management, she specializes in business model innovation. Read more on AI and content creation in her text below.


Transforming content creation: how AI amplifies human creativity.
By Isabelle Mallet, Head of Innovation at Sanoma Learning

When artificial intelligence first entered the conversation about content creation, it raised more questions than it provided answers. Would it replace human creativity? Could it be trusted? And what does it mean for the way we design learning experiences? Coordinating the content creation workstream across our teams, I've witnessed firsthand how AI is reshaping the way we work-not as a replacement, but as a powerful amplifier of human potential.

AI tools have transformed our creative process, from concept to implementation. Across our projects, content specialists spend less time on manual or repetitive tasks and more time focusing on strategy, pedagogy, and creativity. AI is not just about efficiency. It unlocks new ways of working by tailoring content more precisely, iterating quickly, and delivering adaptable materials at scale.

One of the most promising aspects of using artificial intelligence in content creation is its potential to make learning materials more inclusive and accessible. With the right tools, we can adapt content for different difficulty levels, simplify complex language, or generate summaries in just a few minutes. AI features, such as auto-captioning for video content or text-to-speech options, allow for a more proactive creation of inclusive designs while ensuring the highest level of quality. In the past, these adjustments required separate workflows and significant manual effort; now, they can be integrated directly into the content creation process.

A recent multilingual project developed in one of our learning companies perfectly illustrates this potential. A process that traditionally would require weeks of sequential translation and editorial review was completed in hours through AI-generated first drafts. This allowed our language experts and editors to focus on improving content relevance and pedagogical accuracy, always keeping our ethical AI principles in mind.

The project focused on translating a selection of Dutch primary-level picture books into five of the most spoken home languages in the Netherlands: Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Moroccan Arabic, and Syrian Arabic. The goal was to increase accessibility for families from diverse linguistic backgrounds, empowering them to more actively support their children's reading development.

While the efficiency gains were significant, what truly stood out was how AI helped us scale inclusive content design in a way that would have been resource-prohibitive otherwise. By reducing the workload of our translation and editorial teams, we not only delivered this project faster-we also freed up capacity to develop entirely new books.

Throughout the entire process, our experts have taken the lead in reviewing and curating content creation. While we use AI as a powerful tool, it is always the humans who have the final say in validating the end product. This ensures that we deliver high-quality, trustworthy learning solutions.

As we continue exploring the role of AI in content creation, what I am most enthusiastic about is the shift in mindset it enables. When used thoughtfully, these tools don't just streamline our processes, they expand what we can offer. AI helps us explore ideas faster, test new formats, and push the boundaries of what great learning content can be. In this learning journey, one thing is clear: the more intentionally we apply AI, the more it fuels our creative potential.

This essay is part of a series of texts about the topic to be published in June. Stay tuned to our channels to find out more about AI in education.