Friend or foe? How digital artists navigate the generative AI disruption: Creative labor,appraisals,emotions,and coping

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is rapidly transforming creative industries, reshaping not only production practices but also the foundations of creativity, authorship, and professional identity. While prior research has largely focused on consumer evaluations or technology adoption, and from a labor perspective emphasized structural changes, these approaches only partially capture how creators themselves experience these transformations. Addressing this gap, this study examines digital artists’ perspectives on GAI and identifying the factors shaping their emotions and coping behaviors through an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design. Study 1 interviewed digital artists to capture GAI discourses and key variables. Study 2 used an online survey to test relationships among individual innovativeness, perceived legal infrastructure, GAI appraisals, emotions, and coping strategies. Drawing on the transactional stress and coping model, the findings show that innovativeness positively predicted perceived GAI utility, while weak legal infrastructure heightened job threat. These appraisals shaped emotions (anger, helplessness, and hope), which in turn mediated coping responses: approach, avoidance, and confrontation. This study advances understanding of GAI’s psychological impact on creative labor by extending transactional stress–coping theory and offering insights into how creators cope with AI-driven disruptions.