Harnessing a "Spirited Technology": How Working with Generative AI Collapses the Creative Process

Based on an ethnographic study of creative workers using Midjourney in advertising, we show that GenAI use in creative work leads to process collapse. Activities associated with idea generation, development, and implementation – once distributed across stages, spaces, and roles – are compressed into a single, iterative interaction between a skilled creative and GenAI. Brainstorming, visualization, and elements of production are pulled together, reducing handovers and opportunities for collective input and interpretation. We explain this shift by conceptualizing GenAI as a spirited technology: a responsive yet unpredictable system that produces outputs beyond the user’s intentions. Creatives use their skill to negotiate with the technology, iteratively ‘urging on’ and ‘reining in’ outputs. The outcome is highly detailed images that appear complete and trigger early aesthetic closure, whereby GenAI outputs anchor client expectations and limit further idea development. Early aesthetic closure establishes the generated aesthetic artifact as the ‘center of gravity’ of process collapse. As a result, subsequent work is reorganized into aligning GenAI images and real-world production constraints. We show how GenAI reshapes the organization of creative work and call for an AI turn in creativity research to address this new reality.