Abstract Much research in human–artificial intelligence (AI) interaction treats cooperation as a design problem of alignment, asking how system behavior can be coordinated with human intentions, task goals or expectations in order to support effective collaborative action. In this debate contribution, we shift the analytic focus from alignment to sequential organisation and ask how cooperation is interactionally accomplished when one source of action does not demonstrably orient to a shared sense of reality, yet its outputs are nevertheless incorporated into an unfolding sequence of action. Drawing on a sequential comic-making practice involving a generative AI system, we analyse three examples to examine how creative work can progress through misrecognition, breakdown and material effects, not necessarily requiring consensus or control. We argue that such misalignment is not a failure to be repaired but can function as a recurring interactional condition in human–AI cooperation, sustained through the sequential uptake, reinterpretation and transformation of AI-generated outputs. Based on this analysis, we suggest that human–AI interaction and design research would benefit from more explicitly interactional accounts of cooperation that treat misalignment as a productive condition rather than something to be minimised. We position artistic creative practice as a methodologically revealing site for examining how agency, authorship and coordination are practically accomplished in cooperative work with AI and we discuss implications for human-centered design.