THE ARTIST AND THE ALGORITHM: CULTURAL MEDIATION, CREATIVE AUTHORITY, AND HUMAN–AI COLLABORATION IN ADVERTISING

Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in creative industries, not only as a technical tool but as a cultural presence that reshapes how creativity, authorship, and responsibility are understood. While existing research often frames AI adoption in terms of efficiency or ethical risk, less attention has been paid to how AI mediates everyday creative practice and redistributes cultural authority within organizations. This study addresses this gap through a phenomenological investigation of advertising professionals in Jakarta, Indonesia. Based on in-depth interviews with designers, creative directors, and planners, the findings show that AI functions as a mediating actor that reorganizes creative workflows, affects affective expression, and redefines professional judgment. A key contribution is the identification of bidirectional learning, through which technical AI fluency and experiential creative knowledge circulate across hierarchical boundaries. Human oversight emerges as ethical boundary work that sustains meaning and accountability in algorithmically assisted creativity. By situating these dynamics within organizational practice, the study contributes to scholarship on scientific culture by demonstrating how creativity is culturally governed within human–AI systems and highlighting the institutional conditions under which algorithmic collaboration remains meaningful, ethical, and socially grounded.