This study examines the quality of generative and collaborative AI for fictional prose in Japanese. We rolled out an experiment followed by focus groups to elicit responses to 25 texts with the second half randomly presenting the original text, zero-shot-AI-generated text, AI-generated with prompt specification, and human-AI collaboration using multiple-shot and prompt specification. We found that human-AI collaboration had the highest perceived quality, followed by the original text, AI-generated with prompt specification, and finally zero-shot AI-generated content. While participants mentioned the relative absence of originality in human-AI-collaboration, this content was deemed more human-like than the original text due to the polished editing and selection resulting from inputting drafts, adding or replacing nouns, and rearranging sentences and dialogues. The results presented in this study offer a positive outlook on the use of Generative AI for creative writing, but they also highlight the limitations of these tools for developing highly original literary work.

This paper addresses the role of copyright in governing how generative AI replicates artistic style. Style is considered to be somewhat intangible and unfixed and is not typically protected by copyright law. Yet, a key affordance of generative AI the ability to create works ‘in the style of’ other works. The legal, creator and industry implications of copying style through generative AI have not yet been the focus of critical analysis or platform governance research. Instead, legal and scholarly attention has tended to focus on the implications of coping works to train generative AI models and rights over their outputs. In this paper, using a media industries studies approach, we analyze how the music industries’ history of driving copyright expansion may shape generative AI governance across the cultural industries of the future. We offer provocations to encourage dialogues between creators, industry, and critical researchers that historicize debates about copyright and technology, expose the limitations of past approaches to govern copyright on digital platforms, and point to specific institutional dynamics in the music and cultural industries that will influence the development of AI governance regimes.

This paper investigates the discursive strategies employed by OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, to position themselves as leading the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Through an examination of 44 texts, including OpenAI's corporate communications, media appearances, and journalistic coverage, this study reveals how OpenAI utilizes socio-political anxieties and Silicon Valley ideals to shape a discourse of inevitability about AGI's future. OpenAI's discourse centers on four key areas: national security concerns, the juxtaposition of "freedom" and "openness" against the threat of superintelligence, the company's shift from non-profit to commercial entity, and the promotion of AI as a solution to global problems. By strategically invoking these themes, OpenAI establishes itself as a "technological solution."

The company's rhetoric emphasizes the need for regulation, while simultaneously positioning itself as the authority on AI governance. OpenAI's calls for democratic oversight are often coupled with warnings about the dangers of unchecked AI development, reinforcing the company's role as a responsible actor in the tech sector. Ultimately, OpenAI's discursive strategies serve to define the future of AI in a way that aligns with the company's interests. By framing AGI as both inevitable and potentially dangerous, OpenAI creates a narrative that justifies its own pursuit of power against the global diffusion of AGI.

This paper builds on scholarship addressing the invisible labor of online workers from the Global South (Casilli, 2025) by shifting focus to the offline, behind-the-scenes infrastructuring that sustains virtual assistant (VA) work. Virtual assistants provide long-term, informal digital labor, predominantly serving Global North clients, yet their work remains precarious and embedded within household dynamics. We examine the Philippines, a key supplier of digital labor, through in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork across Manila, Cavite, Cebu, and Iligan.

Our study identifies three forms of infrastructuring—material, spatial/temporal, and behavioral—that virtual assistants and their families undertake to meet the demands of continuous online work. Material infrastructuring involves mitigating unreliable infrastructures, such as securing multiple internet connections or relocating for better connectivity. Spatial and temporal infrastructuring reorganizes household rhythms to accommodate graveyard shifts, blurring lines between productive and reproductive labor. Behavioral infrastructuring reshapes daily life through altered sleep patterns, enforced quiet hours, and the redistribution of caregiving responsibilities.

We contribute to debates on digital labor by framing VA work as an “invisible back support” that fuses gendered care labor with client-driven flexibility, reinforcing the Global North-South labor divide. This paper responds to calls for feminist analyses of online work, foregrounding how VA labor subsidizes global capital through unpaid domestic labor. Ultimately, we reveal how the infrastructuring of virtual assistance sustains modern digital economies while deepening inequalities, situating Filipino VA work within a broader history of transnational care labor (Parreñas, 2015; Mezzadri, 2020).