To oversimplify, evolution is a generate-and-test process and the evaluation step is critical. Something needs to decide which variations are better. Often, with generative AI, it’s people who judge the results. Still, generating interesting examples (the brainstorming phase) plays some role in that.

I don’t know a whole lot about Picasso’s art, but I imagine the way he evaluated his own work played an important role, in being able to see that sometimes creative accidents are interesting.