What happens when AI tells our stories? Ambient authorship, cultural explainability, and digital voice

Abstract

This paper examines how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) mediates authorship, voice, and cultural representation in Vietnamese community-based tourism storytelling. Using a three-phase Participatory Analytical Synthesis (PAS) that combines netnography, GenAI prototyping, and community dialogue through a cross-layer integration index, it analyses convergence and divergence across human, algorithmic, and participant narratives. Findings reveal ambient authorship, the algorithmic reproduction of local aesthetics that displaces lived voice, and show that storytellers adopt GenAI conditionally as a drafting aid rather than as authors. The integration index (Ī = 0.46) indicates partial resonance, strongest for authenticity and representation, and weakest for affect and identity. From these results, the paper advances cultural explainability, reframing explainable AI as a social process in which meaning, emotion, and authorship are co-produced and contestable. The study provides conceptual and methodological guidance for participatory and culturally accountable GenAI design in tourism and related creative sectors.