Emergence of a New Aesthetics: the Development of Contemporary Popular Culture in the United States in the Mirror of the Techno-Narratives of the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Contemporary popular culture in the United States is at a critical juncture of transformation driven by the exponential development of artificial intelligence (AI). This study examines AI’s binary impact: it simultaneously serves as a powerful instrument for creativity and efficiency gains while generating fundamental challenges regarding authorship, originality, and employment. The primary focus is on transformations across key sectors of the creative industries. The analysis explores how AI technologies reconceptualize production processes, consumption models, and the public reception of cultural content. The legal and social implications of these changes are addressed separately, including issues of copyright, algorithmic bias, and economic instability. The findings indicate that generative AI is rapidly integrating into the creative industries, significantly expanding content-creation capabilities – from automated generation of musical works and visual effects to the emergence of digital actors in cinema. Personalization algorithms on social-media and streaming platforms now shape mass-audience information consumption, constructing individualized cultural experiences and new marketing paradigms such as virtual influencers. The implementation of AI has a controversial effect: on the one hand, it increases the efficiency of content production and stimulates innovation in popular culture; on the other, it gives rise to multiple challenges. Identified negative consequences include the blurring of boundaries of authorship and the authenticity of creative products, risks of displacing artists with algorithmic systems, unresolved questions of intellectual property (e.g., the contested legal status of AI-generated works), and ethical dilemmas associated with using digital likenesses of real individuals without proper consent. Notably, these problems have already elicited a socio-cultural response: professional communities in the United States are calling for rules governing AI use in creative domains. The article underscores the need to develop ethical-legal frameworks and new business models that ensure a balanced interaction between AI technologies and human creativity, safeguarding artists’ rights and the cultural value of their output. The scholarly contribution lies in a comprehensive conceptualization of generative AI’s impact across multiple dimensions of popular culture. The study synthesizes the latest manifestations of AI integration and outlines possible scenarios for the further development of U.S. popular culture under conditions of human–AI synergy. The conclusions suggest that the future of the creative industries will likely be defined by such synergy, necessitating the design of balanced ethical and legal frameworks.