AI storytelling & narrative evolution in creative industries: a Systematic Review.

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping narrative forms and content across the creative industries, transforming how stories are conceived, produced, distributed, and experienced. This study examines the evolution of storytelling under the influence of AI through a systematic review of high-impact scientific literature. The methodology follows the PRISMA 2020 protocol, combining Discourse Analysis and Grounded Theory for synthesizing results. The sample comprises the most cited articles indexed in Web of Science and Scopus between 2020 and 2025. Findings reveal a predominantly technophilic perspective in current research. The analysis identifies a comprehensive narrative transformation articulated through four key shifts. First, Hybrid Authorship: New collaborative dynamics arise between human creators and generative systems via prompting and automation. Traditional unidirectional storytelling evolves into dialogic human–machine co-creation. Second, Procedural Narratives: AI systems produce adaptive, real-time narratives that adjust according to user interaction and contextual inputs, enabling pervasive storytelling across digital and physical environments. Third: Distributed Authorship and Algorithmic Intentionality: Content generation grounded in large-scale pattern replication challenges conventional notions of originality and ownership. Authorship becomes distributed across datasets, training algorithms, and human prompts, introducing a model of split creative responsibility. Fourth, AI-Augmented Audiences: Users gain technical capacities for narrative self-management, dynamically adopting multiple roles within both the diegetic and creative spheres. These interactions foster emotional and empathetic bonds with AI systems, raising indicators of user dependency. In conclusion, according to the most impactful literature, synthetic narrative participation is emerging as a multidimensional agent of unprecedented relevance in the creative industries. By operating across diegetic, performative, and emotional dimensions—and acquiring embodied forms through robots and interfaces—AI positions itself not merely as a tool, but as a narrative and social agent. This phenomenon marks a fundamental ontological shift: AI intervenes and participates —while remaining an object— in the construction of human fictions, realities and imaginaries.