Thesis Title
Cultural production in the age of Artificial Intelligence: platformization, precarity and contingency

Research Description
In the vibrant media industry, AIGC (artificial intelligence-generated content) creators, who use artificial intelligence technologies to generate content, are emerging as a nascent form of creators and rapidly becoming popular worldwide. As their practices rely on platform-native AI tools, AIGC creators are rendered highly precarious and contingent on technological infrastructure. The integration of AI services into the multi-sided platform market has pushed creators into a subsidy position. Entangled in the asymmetrical power relationship, AIGC creators provide a new angle to examine how the power dynamic between creative workers and the multi-sided market will evolve in the era of AI. Taking the Chinese AIGC market as a starting point for theory-building, this project seeks to deepen the understanding of the impact of AI in the transforming cultural industry.

 

Jiaru Tang is a PhD candidate at Digital Media Research Center at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research interests include creative labour, cultural production, and the integration of AI in platform economy.

Supervisors
Prof Patrik Wikstrom, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Kylie Pappalardo, Queensland University of Technology