Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significantly advanced in creating professional-level media content. In creative education, determining how students can benefit without becoming dependent on them is a challenge. In this study, researchers conducted an exploratory experiment that positioned AI as a relational artifact to students in a series of drawing activities and examined the potential impact of affective relations with machines in socio-cultural creative learning. The resulting artifacts, observations, and interview transcripts were analyzed using the Consensual Assessment Technique and a grounded theory approach. The study's results indicate that the design professors reliably evaluated the student drawings as more creative than the AI drawings, but neither demonstrated a consistent increase in creativity. However, the presence of AI engaged the students to explore different approaches to artistic prompts. We theorize that AI can be mediated as a learning artifact for transformative creativity if the students perceive their relationship with AI as empathetic and collaborative.