Self-programmable creative labour
Generative AI and the reorganisation of work in the UK creative industries
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24226827 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jie Huang (0009-0007-4279-2914, Loughborough University London, UK) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-08 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Media Culture & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-4437 • E-ISSN: 1460-3675 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01634437261494891 |
| OpenAlex | W7221153160 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 22 |
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly entering creative work not only as a set of tools, but as a new demand placed on creative practitioners. Existing debates on AI in the creative industries have tended to focus on productivity, creativity or authorship. While important, such framings risk treating AI as a discrete technological intervention rather than as part of a broader reorganisation of creative labour. Drawing on Castells’s concept of self-programmable labour , this article examines how practitioners in the UK film, games and live performance sectors incorporate generative AI into their everyday work. Based on 21 interviews with AI-engaged practitioners, it argues that generative AI is helping to normalise a mode of creative labour in which practitioners are expected to continually retrain, reconfigure their workflows and upgrade their skills in response to technological change. Yet this demand is unevenly distributed, and its rewards remain uncertain. AI may expand what practitioners can produce, but it does not necessarily expand what they can claim in terms of bargaining power, career stability or recognition. The article suggests that in AI-mediated creative economies, self-programmability is becoming less a route to a professional advantage than a condition of survival.
Authorship · career stability · Castells · Creative economy · Creative industries · creative labour · Film industry · generative AI · live performance · Technological change · video game industry · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Legal and Labor Studies
Informationalism, networks, and the network society
Upgrading the self
Creative Labour
AI and work in the creative industries
‘It used to be fix-it in post production! now it’s fix-it in pre-production’
The quantified self
Looking for work in creative industries policy
Generative AI and creative practices
Rethinking creativity
Reflecting on cultural labour in the time of AI
Generative AI in the screen and live performance industries
Platform Practices in the Cultural Industries
In the Social Factory
Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society
| Highly cited | No |
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