Authorial Positioning and Creative Agency in AI-Mediated Music

Abstract

This article examines how generative AI platforms reconfigure authorship and creative agency in music production. Drawing on interviews with non-professional Chinese creators, it addresses the question of how individuals sustain authorship when cultural outcomes are co-produced with algorithmic systems. The article introduces the concept of authorial positioning to describe the reflexive and tactical practices through which human creators establish their authorial presence and creative agency in AI-mediated contexts. Findings demonstrate, first, that participants experienced an ambiguous sense of authorship as they perceived themselves as neither entirely present nor absent from their creative works, requiring continuous interpretive labour to claim authorship; second, creators developed strategic repertoires, including exploratory improvisation, adaptive calibration, and tactical appropriation, to navigate algorithmic unpredictability and infrastructural dependency. These dynamics reveal that creative agency is distributed but asymmetrically exercised through human interpretive labour. Drawing on these findings, the article contributes to ongoing discussions of authorship in music by proposing the concept of authorial positioning to capture the reflexive and tactical labour through which creators sustain authorship within human–AI assemblages. It offers empirical grounding for understanding how authorship is relationally enacted under conditions of algorithmic mediation, moving beyond human–machine or empowerment-constraint dichotomies.