From Muse to Machine: A Scoping Literature Review of AI in Cultural Production

This paper is a scoping literature review of research on artificial intelligence (AI) in cultural production, a field that is being shaped by rapid technological change and unresolved debates. Results identified four areas of interest in the current literature on AI in cultural production: methodological challenges, creativity and aesthetics, copyright and policy, and ethics. AI appears in the reviewed papers both as collaborator and disruptor, challenging established notions of authorship, originality, and artistic integrity. While some studies emphasise increased efficiency and democratisation, others highlight risks of bias, opacity, and the extraction of cultural value through data colonialism and platformisation. A key finding is the dominance of conceptual and normative work over empirical evidence. With AI reshaping the cultural, ethical, and legal foundations of creativity, the field requires more empirically grounded research that remains attentive to the normative and ethical implications of AI in cultural production.