Generative AI in Creative Work: Implications for Working, Identities, and Careers

This symposium offers insights into the tensions and transformations prompted by Generative AI (GenAI) in creative work, creative workers’ identities, creative careers, and governance in creative industries. GenAI has the capability to create textual, visual, and auditory content that, until recently, only humans could produce. As creative work draws upon the creative workers’ identities, GenAI raises questions about what it means to be a creative worker and stimulates novel questions around how creative workers define themselves as creatives and professionals. This symposium offers theoretical extensions to identity literature by examining how GenAI generates both identity threats and opportunities, and by illuminating the identity work creative workers undertake in response. We also consider how GenAI shapes creative careers, offering insights into sustainable creative careers in the context of GenAI. We show how GenAI enables novel creative approaches, potentially strengthening creative workers’ agency and meaningfulness, and highlight concerns about its potential to replace human creativity and threaten creative careers. As creative work is conducted within and across organizations, and by entrepreneurial artists, we offer practical insights into how individuals and organizations can implement GenAI in ways that strengthen artists’ creative and professional identities, careers, and their efforts for responsible AI use. The presentations cover creative work in music, visual media, social media, and everyday tasks, and build on a variety of methodological approaches, including qualitative inquiry, experience sampling, and experimental research. When Musicians Meet the Machine: Identity, Authenticity, and Emotional Reactions to Generative AI Author: Ying Chen; University of Rhode Island Who am I with AI? Examining Professional Artists’ Identity Work in Response to Generative AI Author: Karissa Beesley; University of Michigan Author: Mari Kira; University of Michigan Whose Work Is It? How Generative AI Reshapes Creators’ Ownership and Meaningfulness Author: Ziyan Cui; Tsinghua University Author: Ning Li; Tsinghua University Creativity in Human–AI Collaboration: How Different AI Use Patterns Influence Creative Self-Beliefs Author: Viva Nsair; Western Michigan University Responsible Red-Teaming as Collective Sensemaking in the AI-Driven Music Ecosystem Author: Antigoni Papadimitriou; State University of New York, Farmingdale State College