Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>The proliferation of Generative AI (GenAI) and its growing role in creative industries necessitate studying adoption beyond user groups in the Global North. This paper provides one of the first empirical studies on human-AI interaction and co-creation among creative professionals in Iran, an underexplored context influenced by sociomaterial dimensions and geopolitical constraints. Through semi-structured interviews with 16 practitioners, preceded by surveys (N=129), we found about the participants’ perceptions through their mental models, with the primacy of director- and lead-oriented models, their challenges due to technical limitations and systemic inequities, and their bottom-up adaptive strategies. Our discussion highlights the underlying factors influencing the dominance of the director mental model, the importance of control and intelligible explanations for user empowerment, the compensatory labor as an Adoption Tax imposed by access barriers and culturally unrepresentative models, and the emergence of Folk Ethics as the practitioners establish collective, bottom-up norms of responsibility. This study contributes critical implications for the future development of more user-centered, equitable, and contextually aware human-AI co-creative systems.</p>