Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in the Creator Economy: Creativities, Adaptation, Agency, and Trust

Artificial intelligence is ever more integrated into the creator economy, shaping the conditions within which creative work is produced, circulated, valued, and recognised. As AI is incorporated into creative tools, platforms, and cultural production, creators are encountering new opportunities alongside renewed uncertainties about authorship, occupational roles, creativity, and artistic value. Four interrelated themes are introduced as a framework for contextualising AI in the creator economy: contested and coexisting creativities, adaptation as negotiation, human and non-human distributed agency, and trust and ethics. Together, these themes illuminate how creators, companies, and state institutions respond to changing technological conditions while negotiating enduring questions about creative authority, participation, responsibility, and recognition. The articles collected in this special issue interrogate these tensions as AI is used, experienced, contested, and adapted across different creative practices, organisations, and occupational spaces.