Writing code to make art, design or other expressive work rather than functional software. Tools such as Processing, openFrameworks and p5.js grew a large community around it.
It's very easy to make bad stuff with machine learning. And one difference between that and kind of traditional creative coding is that there's a certain kind of skill level you have to get to before you can do anything with creative coding.
Tom White, Tom White & Gene Kogan on the Birth of GAN Art
I was talking to Marcin Ignac of Variable earlier today, and he's the creative coding generation, which came 10 years later.
Marius Watz, Marius Watz on Pre-Modern Generative Art