From spectacle to suspicion: how AI-augmented culinary storytelling reshapes chefs’ digital identities and authenticity in the post-pandemic era

Purpose The rapid emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital food storytelling presents opportunities and challenges for sustaining long-term audience engagement. This study investigates how AI-augmented culinary content influences follower retention through the sequential mediating roles of perceived authenticity and digital familiarity and the moderating effect of health consciousness, grounded exclusively in Dual Process Theory (DPT). Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 1,172 followers of leading chef influencers in Iraq using an online survey. This study measured five constructs: AI-enhanced storytelling, perceived authenticity, digital familiarity, follower retention, and health consciousness. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with bootstrapping was used to examine the direct, indirect, sequential, and moderating effects. Findings AI-augmented storytelling significantly enhances perceived authenticity, which subsequently strengthens digital familiarity. Sequential mediation results confirmed that authenticity and familiarity fully mediated the relationship between AI-generated content and follower retention. Moderating analysis revealed that health consciousness attenuates the authenticity–retention link but amplifies the familiarity–retention relationship, indicating that health-oriented audiences rely more on consistent, trustworthy exposure than on immediate perceptions of authenticity. The proposed DPT-based model explained substantial variance in content authenticity (R2 = 0.184), digital familiarity (R2 = 0.430), and follower retention (R2 = 0.482). Research limitations/implications The findings advance Dual Process Theory by empirically demonstrating how reflective (System 2) evaluations of authenticity transition into intuitive (System 1) experiences of familiarity that sustain behavioral loyalty. They underscore that the effectiveness of AI-driven storytelling depends not on technological novelty but on its ability to activate cognitive trust and emotional fluency. For health-conscious audiences, engagement strategies should emphasize factual accuracy, transparency, and sustained reliability to satisfy reflective reasoning before an intuitive attachment develops. Originality/value This research extends Dual Process Theory to the field of AI-mediated digital storytelling by identifying a dual-stage cognitive–affective mechanism that drives follower retention. This study offers theoretical and practical insights into how authenticity and familiarity jointly determine engagement outcomes and how health consciousness shapes the balance between analytical and affective processing in AI-enhanced culinary communication.