The rapid development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), while providing organizations with a strong competitive advantage, has raised concerns like replacing humans with AI and technological unemployment. AI awareness refers to employee perceptions of the likelihood that AI will replace their current jobs in the future. Existing research on AI awareness has focused mainly on the disadvantages of AI awareness such as a lower organizational commitment and higher cynicism. Despite the potential effect of AI awareness on employee creativity, little is known about how employees respond to the threat of being replaced, especially in a positive way, which in turn positively affects creativity. Given the increased levels of AI awareness in organizations and importance of employee creativity for organizations to achieve innovation and long-term growth, more research is required to gain insight into the complex relationship between AI awareness and employee creativity. Drawing on the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, we explore whether, when, and why AI awareness contributes differently to different creativity types. On the one hand, to demonstrate employability and preserve employment resources, employees who have a higher AI awareness may engage in exploitative learning, a resource protection strategy, to enhance existing competencies and improve job performance. On the other hand, to obtain new employment resources, they may engage in exploratory learning, a resource acquisition strategy, to acquire new knowledge and skills. With increased knowledge and skills in the goal-oriented process of resource investment, employees’ incremental and radical creativity can be enhanced. In addition, employees can choose different behavioral strategies (i.e., exploitative and exploratory learning) in response to AI awareness by evaluating the potential resource loss and gain associated with different possible reactions to team performance climate and team mastery climate. This study collected data from 1088 employees and 288 team leaders using a multipoint, multisource questionnaire method. Given the nested nature of our data (i.e., individuals nested in teams), we tested our hypotheses by conducting a multilevel path analysis using MPLUS 8. In addition, we used the Monte Carlo method with 20,000 repetitions to test the mediation and moderated mediation effects. The results show that 1) employees’ AI awareness has a positive indirect influence on employee incremental creativity via exploitative learning, 2) employees’ AI awareness has a positive indirect influence on employee incremental and radical creativity via explorative learning, 3) team performance climate positively moderates the indirect relationship between AI awareness and incremental creativity via exploitative learning, and 4) team mastery climate positively moderates the indirect relationship between AI awareness and incremental and radical creativity via explorative learning. This study makes several theoretical contributions. First, drawing on COR theory, this study examines the differential implications of AI awareness for employee incremental creativity versus radical creativity via exploitative and explorative learning from a resource investment perspective. Our findings provide a new perspective to understand the relationship between AI awareness and creativity. Second, by treating creativity as a two-dimensional construct and exploring the mediating roles of exploitative and explorative learning in the relationship between AI awareness and creativity, this study provides a novel explanation for the mechanism by which AI awareness drives individual incremental and radical creativity. Third, based on the COR theory, this study investigates the moderating roles of team mastery climate and team performance climate, thus highlighting the boundary conditions under which employees’ AI awareness affects individual creativity through exploitative and explorative learning. Our findings provide theoretical references for organizations to deal with the issue of replacing humans with AI and maintain healthy employment relationships in management practices.