AI and Content Creation Research: A Snapshot of What We Know and What We Don’t Know

Content creation and distribution have been transformed by artificial intelligence (AI), presenting numerous opportunities and complex challenges. This chapter, a systematic literature review, investigates AI’s influence on content production, identifying ten major themes that exemplify AI’s impact on the creative process at various phases. Utilizing peer-reviewed journal articles from 2021 to 2024 sourced from Scopus, ScienceDirect, and eight senior baskets of Information Systems (IS) journals, the review highlights AI’s transformative potential in content generation, including efficiency, originality, and customization. It explores AI applications in strategy and planning, production, review and editing, publication, promotion, analysis and feedback, and consumer engagement, as well as research and ideation. The review also discusses the legal, ethical, and societal ramifications of AI in creative fields, AI algorithms and prompts, integration frameworks, and human–AI collaboration. AI integration challenges conventional concepts of creativity, suggesting a shift to collaborative intelligence where human and AI talents are complementary. This necessitates novel theoretical frameworks to understand human–AI dynamics in creative processes. Practically, AI tools enhance efficiency and present new opportunities for content creators, requiring ethical standards and transparency to maintain digital content integrity and trust. This review synthesizes current research on AI’s role in content creation, highlighting both opportunities and challenges, and contributes to academic discourse by identifying gaps and proposing new research avenues. For practitioners, it offers insights into AI tools’ practical applications and their potential to revolutionize content creation, informing strategic decisions in digital marketing and creative industries. Future research should focus on developing comprehensive models of human–AI collaboration, exploring AI’s long-term social consequences in creative industries, and addressing ethical questions associated with AI-driven output. Empirical research on customer views and trust in AI-generated content could further enhance human–AI synergy in content development.