Synthetic Culture and Brand Mythmaking in the Age of Generative AI

This chapter discusses the ways in which the new branding emerges through generative AI, generating synthetic culture algorithmically generated stories, symbols and personas, and aesthetic spaces that reproduce the brand meaning-making process and way of interaction with consumers. Based on the socio-technical, cultural systems, and mythmaking theories, the chapter explores the role of AI as a cultural co-creator that is able to generate dynamic, adaptive, and hyper-personalized brand myths. It examines the innovative change of human agency in controlling stories to hybrid human-AI cultural production and points to the consequences of authenticity, identity creation, consumer attitude, and narrative management. also relates the managerial, theoretical and ethical issues related to synthetic culture such as transparency, algorithmic bias, authorship, and cultural safety. The chapter offers an in-depth view of AI-mediated mythmaking and outlines the key areas of future research as the concept of computational creativity begins to dominate the cultural imagination of this era.