July 2025 the Global Perspectives on GenAI and Cultural Production project kicked off with a one-week workshop hosted by the University of Amsterdam and supported by the Creative Labour and Critical Futures Cluster of Scholarly Prominence. The project investigates how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies are integrated in the cultural industries around the globe. It asks: How does the uptake of these technologies reshape imaginations and experiences of creative work among cultural workers, as well as among media companies, cultural intermediaries, and policy makers? Addressing this question, the research team will, over the next couple of years, examine specific industries and urban regions: the manga and anime industry in Tokyo, Japan, the film and video industry in Mumbai, India and Lagos, Nigeria, health and fitness content creation in São Paulo, Brazil, and digital advertising in Santiago, Chile.

Inspired by postcolonial and decolonial theory, the ambition is to develop these industries and regions as key reference points in research and theory building on cultural production and technological change. ​The central concepts in this field of study–from creativity and innovation to precarity and cultural labor–still bear a strong imprint of Western institutions, cultural practices, and ideals. Developing global perspectives on GenAI and cultural industries, we aim to denaturalize and rethink these concepts, while explicitly thematizing and examining the global power relations that structure the political economies in which GenAI technologies are developed and integrated in cultural production. In this blogpost we want to introduce all team members.

The project expands on past scholarship of the two project leads. Thomas is a Professor of Data, Culture & Institutions at the University of Amsterdam and David a Professor of Media & Platform Studies at the University of Toronto. Over the last decade their work analyzed the relationship between platform companies (such as Facebook, Google, and Tencent) and cultural producers, such as game developers, journalists, and creators. This work has resulted in Platforms and Cultural Production, a book co-authored with Brooke Erin Duffy and translated into Italian and Chinese.

Over the last two years, their work has focussed on developing global perspectives on platforms, AI, and the cultural industries, resulting in a 2025 double special issue for the International Journal of Cultural Studies. The rapid uptake of GenAI in specific segments of the cultural industries prompted the question how these new technologies are adopted and negotiated by cultural producers, operating within different, yet entangled political-economic, social and cultural configurations. This led to the start of this new project with a much broader group of media scholars, introduced below.

“Have me in your pocket, wherever you go!” This phrase appears often among Brazilian social media creators who are now adopting AI tools for many tasks. Most importantly, they use AI to get closer to their audiences, create more customised content, and appear more authentic and real. Beyond producing and editing posts, AI also supports the development of creators’ own products, courses, and personalised advice services, extending their offer to followers.

Latin America is one of the largest influencer markets in the world, with Brazil at the forefront – second only to the United States. Since its early days, the Brazil influencer industry has been a site of rapid technological adoption and innovation, so it is not surprising that it has embraced AI so strongly. This is especially visible in the biggest and most lucrative fields in the creator economy, such as beauty, health, and fitness influence. More than technical support, AI has expanded how content is produced, how partnerships with brands are shaped, and what kinds of products creators can offer.

However, this wide adoption is not only driven by creators themselves trying to speed up and personalise their production. Central stakeholders also play a decisive role. Influencer marketing agencies have been key actors, pushing AI adoption among brands and influencers, while also mediating developments with other players such as think tanks and tech start-ups. These agencies coordinate industry practices and give symbolic meaning to AI. As cultural intermediaries, agencies channel innovation in ways that strengthen their power and economic interests, while reshaping the entire influencer economy. Thus, the aim of this research on the Brazilian influencer market is to examine how AI is reconfiguring the creator economy, by exploring working conditions and practices, as well as the complex relations among intermediaries and stakeholders, providing a broader picture of the power dynamics around AI in this sector.

When Amitabh Bachchan had to go to court in 2022 to stop his voice, face, and image from being cloned by AI, it was a wake-up call. If India’s most powerful moviestar was that vulnerable, what chances do ordinary creators have? Generative AI can now copy a person’s likeness from mere seconds of audio or video, collapsing long-standing protections around authorship, copyright, and identity.

This sub-project focuses on India’s audiovisual industries, including film, television, and digital media, and how technological change reshapes creative labor. India is one of the largest producers of global audiovisual culture, with six major film industries, more than 800 television channels, and over 40 streaming platforms. Cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai anchor this ecosystem, where storytelling traditions collide with global media flows. That scale makes India not just interesting but essential for understanding how AI is transforming culture worldwide.

AI startups such as InVideo and Dubverse position themselves as democratizing forces. By automating editing, subtitling, and dubbing across Indian languages, these platforms lower costs for small creators and regional studios that have long lacked access to such tools. At the same time, their reliance on U.S.-based infrastructures and global AI models highlight a different reality. The promise of inclusion therefore sits uneasily alongside the reality of dependency and extraction. All the while, the Indian government presents itself as a global AI leader, launching an AI Safety Institute and hosting international summits. Yet, its domestic policy often veers towards censorship. For example, there are guidelines that encourage platforms to pre-emptively remove “unlawful” content, a vague standard that risks silencing dissent more than safeguarding the rights of artists.

All this is to say, India’s AI future is not simply a story of technological adoption. It is a struggle over power, identity, and control: who owns cultural expression? Who gets to define the boundaries of speech? And, who profits from the labor of millions of Indian creators? These are the stakes that will shape not just the future of Indian media, but the global circulation of culture itself.

Chile’s advertising industry is in the middle of a digital revolution. Once dominated by traditional media, the sector is now being reshaped by platforms, data, and increasingly, artificial intelligence. Digital advertising is already the main driver of ad spending and in just a few years it will capture the majority of the market. Brands and agencies are pouring resources into online channels, following audiences that spend more time on social media, streaming, and mobile platforms.

AI is accelerating this shift. For agencies, it means smarter targeting, real-time campaign optimisation, and the ability to personalise ads at scale. For creators, it’s about producing content faster and more efficiently. Tools like Runway—founded by Chilean entrepreneurs and now used in Hollywood—are bringing AI into video and ad production, while leading firms such as Fabula are blending cinematic storytelling with AI-driven workflows to create campaigns for global brands. These innovations are making Chile’s advertising sector more competitive internationally, but they also raise tough questions. As AI automates certain creative and strategic tasks, the role of human talent is changing. The challenge is finding the right balance: using AI to boost creativity and efficiency without eroding the unique human touch that makes advertising resonate. What’s clear is that Chile’s digital advertising market is not just growing—it’s evolving into a testbed for how AI can transform creativity, strategy, and the very nature of marketing work.

Over the past years, the global markets’ demand for anime products has increased significantly. Think of the recent animation hit Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, breaking box office records in the US and Canada in two weeks. However, Japan’s anime industry has always been under-staffed. To tackle labour-shortage and enhance efficiency in production, many studios and production houses have started to embrace GenAI and other digital technologies as a solution.

The digital transformation of Japan’s anime industry, including the implementation of AI tools and the reliance of streaming platforms for distribution warrants closer attention. This sub-project traces the development of GenAI integration into industrial practices in Japan, explores the opportunities and challenges posted by digital technologies, and investigates the impact of AI and streaming platforms on the creative workflow. Drawing on her past experience on media industries studies, I will lead the project in collaboration with Dr. Hiromi Tanaka. In the future two years, based at Meiji University, we will undertake ethnographic fieldworks at industrial events in Japan and conduct in-depth interviews with cultural workers (ranging from producers, animators, character designers, to voice actors) to gain a deeper insight into how digital technologies are transforming cultural workers’ everyday labour conditions.These stories and lived experiences will help to inform our understandings about GenAI-human relations in creative sectors.

My work interrogates the intersection of Gen AI and cultural production in Nigeria with a focus on the Nigerian film industry (Nollywood) and the Nigerian content creation industry. These industries require deep attention in global conversations about the economic, cultural, and regulatory implications of artificial intelligence for cultural production, including the emergent forms of power relations that structure industrial practices. In recent times, Nigerian creatives have started integrating AI tools mainly developed in the US and China. Tools like Google’s Veo 3, ChatGPT, Gemini, Sono, and many others prominently feature in productions from the development to post-production stages. This has even influenced the emergence of local AI startups like Plotweaver and Awari, designed to reflect local flavour and cultural specificity. Yet, government intervention remains minimal in relations to AI and Nigerian cultural industries. My research thus illuminates how Nollywood and the creator industries are navigating these techno-industrial complexities in their quotidian practices. I am particularly interested in the implications of AI adoption for the political economy of the industry, notions of creativity, existent and pervasive informality, governance imaginaries, and cultural labour.

Preliminary insights from industry sources suggest continuous and widespread adoption of AI tools as they potentially address structural inadequacies such as paucity of production studios and pre-eminence of low-budget production cultures. Nevertheless, cultural misappropriation and infrastructural gaps represent major hurdles for creative adoption. Local start-ups such as Plotweaver brand themselves as answer to issues of cultural dissonance, however, a lot needs to be done to build the infrastructure that would compete with the “global” tools currently leading in the industries. In a national context like Nigeria with multi-layered infrastructural challenge, we have a lot to learn from how local start-ups navigate their operational conditions for local and transnational adoption. There are also valuable insights accruable from how “global” companies from the US and China steer operations within the Nigerian context. Overall, the industrial conditions of Nollywood and the creator industry provide granular examples of how institutional practices of AI companies, including their creative affordances, are accepted, internalised, resisted, and rejected by cultural workers.