Artificial intelligence adoption, financialization, and technological innovation: Evidence from the media industry

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a critical driver of digital transformation, yet the mechanisms through which AI adoption affects firms’ technological innovation remain insufficiently understood. Using panel data on Chinese A-share listed media enterprises from 2009 to 2023, this study constructs firm-level AI adoption indicators based on text mining of annual reports and examines the impact of AI application on technological innovation. The empirical results show that AI adoption significantly enhances firms’ technological innovation performance. Mechanism analyses reveal that AI promotes innovation primarily by suppressing corporate financialization and reallocating resources from financial assets to research and development activities. This de-financialization channel plays a dominant mediating role. In addition, AI adoption increases analyst attention, strengthens external monitoring from capital markets, and further reinforces firms’ innovation incentives, although this governance channel exhibits a comparatively smaller mediating effect. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the innovation-enhancing effects of AI adoption are significant for state-owned media enterprises, while no comparable effects are observed for non-state-owned firms.These findings suggest that AI not only provides direct technological empowerment but also reshapes firms’ capital allocation and governance environments in ways that favor long-term innovation. From a policy perspective, the results highlight the importance of encouraging AI adoption as a means of guiding corporate resources away from short-term financial investments toward productive innovation, while strengthening capital market oversight to amplify the innovation returns of digital transformation.