Beyond disruption and invisibility: Interactional continuity in everyday AI use in India
2026-05-27
Research on the social significance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in journalism, communication, and organizational contexts is often organized around two emphases: one foregrounds disruption, framing standalone Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools as transformative; the other foregrounds invisibility, treating embedded AI as backgrounded. We bridge these emphases with interactional continuity , a user-centered frame that explains cross-modality incorporation at the level of task episodes: AI use stabilizes through sequential placement in ongoing activities, while interface packaging shapes whether it is perceived and named as AI. Grounded in infrastructure theory, platform studies, and digital meaning-making, we examine everyday AI use in the Global South through 28 semi-structured interviews in an Indian workplace. We used iterative AI-assisted and manual coding to identify patterns. Importantly, we found that respondents used AI as episode-level task support within familiar platform routines, illustrating how disruption and invisibility can emerge from task sequencing and interface cues.