THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF CREATIVITY IN THE AGE OF GENERATIVE AI: RETHINKING AUTHORSHIP AND VISUAL LABOR
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30651/cadj.v2i2.34223Keywords:
Authorship, Creative Labor, Generative AI, Social Construction, Sociology of Work, Visual LaborAbstract
Generative AI systems now produce images from short text prompts. This change raises sociological questions about who is seen as a creator and how visual work is valued. This study examines how creativity, authorship, and visual labor are socially constructed in the age of generative AI. The study uses qualitative documentary analysis with a constructivist approach. The data are four sets of public documents. They cover the 2022 Colorado State Fair case, the 2025 report of the United States Copyright Office and the ruling in Thaler v. Perlmutter, the 2023 agreement of the Writers Guild of America, and empirical studies of artists, audiences, and workers published from 2022 to 2025. The analysis draws on social construction, boundary-work, art worlds, and the sociology of work. The findings show three constructions. Recognition of the creator depends on the rules of each setting and not on the image alone. Definition by law assigns authorship to humans who contribute identifiable expression. Valuation of creative work depends on labor contracts, on how tasks change and become invisible, and on the labels that audiences read. The study argues that creativity is a social accomplishment that different groups negotiate. It offers practical implications for designers and design educators, including documentation of human contribution, disclosure of AI use, and clear contract terms.
References
Acemoglu, D., & Restrepo, P. (2019). Automation and new tasks: How technology displaces and reinstates labor. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(2), 3–30. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.33.2.3
AI artwork wins art competition and artists are upset. (2022). The Decoder. https://the-decoder.com/ai-artwork-wins-art-competition-and-artists-are-upset/
AI won an art contest, and artists are furious. (2022, September 3). WTOP News. https://wtop.com/arts/2022/09/ai-won-an-art-contest-and-artists-are-furious/
Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in context: Update to the social psychology of creativity. Westview Press.
Autor, D. H. (2015). Why are there still so many jobs? The history and future of workplace automation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(3), 3–30. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.29.3.3
Baker Donelson. (2026, March). Supreme Court denies certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter: AI cannot be an author under the Copyright Act. https://www.bakerdonelson.com/supreme-court-denies-certiorari-in-thaler-v-perlmutter-ai-cannot-be-an-author-under-the-copyright-act
Barthes, R. (1977). Image, music, text (S. Heath, Trans.). Fontana Press.
Becker, H. S. (1982). Art worlds. University of California Press.
Benjamin, W. (1969). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (H. Zohn, Trans., pp. 217–251). Schocken Books. (Original work published 1936)
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Anchor Books.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature (R. Johnson, Ed.). Columbia University Press.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Braverman, H. (1974). Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. Monthly Review Press.
CBS Colorado. (2022). Artificial intelligence artwork wins 1st place at Colorado State Fair, causing controversy. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/ai-created-art-exhibit-first-place-colorado-state-fair-causing-controversy-jason-allen/
Cetinic, E., & She, J. (2022). Understanding and creating art with AI: Review and outlook. ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications, 18(2), Article 66. https://doi.org/10.1145/3475799
Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence. Yale University Press.
Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2018). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Society, culture, and person: A systems view of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity: Contemporary psychological perspectives (pp. 325–339). Cambridge University Press.
Doshi, A. R., & Hauser, O. P. (2024). Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. Science Advances, 10(28), Article eadn5290. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn5290
Epstein, Z., Hertzmann, A., Akten, M., Farid, H., Fjeld, J., Frank, M. R., Groh, M., Herman, L., Leach, N., Mahari, R., Pentland, A., Russakovsky, O., Schroeder, H., & Smith, A. (2023). Art and the science of generative AI. Science, 380(6650), 1110–1111. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh4451
Erickson, K. (2024). AI and work in the creative industries: Digital continuity or discontinuity? Creative Industries Journal. https://doi.org/10.1080/17510694.2024.2421135
Faqih, M. A., Gusma, F. D., & Yazar, F. (2026). Visualizing social inequality through character and environmental design in Jumbo: A design discourse analysis using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory. Chester: Art and Design Journal, 2(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.30651/cadj.v2i1.33526
Faqih, M. A., & Nasrillah, F. (2026). Visual rhetoric of cancellation: A semiotic analysis of digital callout design and public opinion formation on social media platforms. Chester: Art and Design Journal, 2(1), 15–23. https://doi.org/10.30651/cadj.v2i1.33471
Foucault, M. (1977). What is an author? In D. F. Bouchard (Ed.), Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews (D. F. Bouchard & S. Simon, Trans., pp. 113–138). Cornell University Press. (Original work published 1969)
Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 48(6), 781–795. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095325
Gill, R., & Pratt, A. (2008). In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work. Theory, Culture & Society, 25(7–8), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276408097794
Gray, M. L., & Suri, S. (2019). Ghost work: How to stop Silicon Valley from building a new global underclass. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Hesmondhalgh, D., & Baker, S. (2011). Creative labour: Media work in three cultural industries. Routledge.
Horton, C. B., Jr., White, M. W., & Iyengar, S. S. (2023). Bias against AI art can enhance perceptions of human creativity. Scientific Reports, 13, Article 19001. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45202-3
Jiang, H. H., Brown, L., Cheng, J., Khan, M., Gupta, A., Workman, D., Hanna, A., Flowers, J., & Gebru, T. (2023). AI art and its impact on artists. In Proceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (pp. 363–374). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3600211.3604681
McRobbie, A. (2016). Be creative: Making a living in the new culture industries. Polity Press.
Menger, P.-M. (1999). Artistic labor markets and careers. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 541–574. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.25.1.541
Neff, G., Wissinger, E., & Zukin, S. (2005). Entrepreneurial labor among cultural producers: “Cool” jobs in “hot” industries. Social Semiotics, 15(3), 307–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330500154741
Noy, S., & Zhang, W. (2023). Experimental evidence on the productivity effects of generative artificial intelligence. Science, 381(6654), 187–192. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh2586
Pinch, T. J., & Bijker, W. E. (1984). The social construction of facts and artefacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science, 14(3), 399–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631284014003004
Porquet, J., Wang, S., & Chilton, L. B. (2025). Copying style, extracting value: Illustrators’ perception of AI style transfer and its impact on creative labor. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Article 202). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713854
Rose, M. (1993). Authors and owners: The invention of copyright. Harvard University Press.
Runco, M. A., & Jaeger, G. J. (2012). The standard definition of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 24(1), 92–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2012.650092
Secoca, R., Habibi, F., Yazar, F., & Wicaksana, A. K. (2026). Visual nostalgia in contemporary film posters: A design discourse analysis of Barbie, The Holdovers, and Late Night with the Devil. Chester: Art and Design Journal, 2(1), 50–58. https://doi.org/10.30651/cadj.v2i1.33709
Shan, S., Cryan, J., Wenger, E., Zheng, H., Hanocka, R., & Zhao, B. Y. (2023). Glaze: Protecting artists from style mimicry by text-to-image models (arXiv:2302.04222). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2302.04222
Star, S. L., & Strauss, A. (1999). Layers of silence, arenas of voice: The ecology of visible and invisible work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 8(1–2), 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008651105359
Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025).
Tracy, S. J. (2010). Qualitative quality: Eight “big-tent” criteria for excellent qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(10), 837–851. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800410383121
U.S. Copyright Office. (2025). Copyright and artificial intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf
U.S. Copyright Office Review Board. (2023). Second request for reconsideration for refusal to register Théâtre D’opéra Spatial. https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/Theatre-Dopera-Spatial.pdf
Woodmansee, M. (1994). The author, art, and the market: Rereading the history of aesthetics. Columbia University Press.
Writers Guild of America West. (n.d.). Artificial intelligence. https://www.wga.org/contracts/know-your-rights/artificial-intelligence
Yuniar, M. R., & Yazar, F. (2026). Negotiating artistic independence: Design discourse in the ARTJOG 2026 sponsorship debate. Chester: Art and Design Journal, 2(1), 34–49. https://doi.org/10.30651/cadj.v2i1.33498
