‘When AI has helped me get there, is it still my idea?’ identity dissonance in creative work under conditions of algorithmic co-production

The article investigates how advertising creatives negotiate their identity in the context of generative AI’s (GenAI) increasing role in concept development. Based on expert interviews and netnographic discourse analysis, the study shows that GenAI disrupts familiar understandings of authorship, originality, and affective connection to creative work. Participants describe an ongoing negotiation in which feelings of pride, personal ownership, and professional recognition are unsettled and reconfigured as human and machine contributions intertwine. To capture this dynamic, the article develops the Creative Identity Dissonance Loop (CIDL), a recursive process marked by ownership ambiguity, emotional dissonance, and value repositioning, through which professionals repeatedly negotiate boundaries, experience detachment and erosion, reframe their roles, and reinforce their creative agency. The analysis contributes to identity-work and creative labour scholarship by illustrating how algorithmic co-production reshapes the symbolic and affective conditions of creative practice, challenging the stability of creative selfhood in contemporary advertising work.