AI literacy in school education is booming within the scientific discourse of AI in education. How AI literacy is currently being framed serves diverse educational, political, and commercial purposes influencing how we imagine postdigital classrooms today and in the future. More importantly, how AI literacy emerges in primary education notably impacts how children understand AI and their own agency in a society where AI is ubiquitous. This study reviews how scientific literature conceptualises AI literacy, focusing on middle school students. An AI-adapted literacy framework (GeST) is used in the analysis to distinguish three perspectives of AI literacy (Generic, Situated, and Transformative). Forty-four papers from 2016–2024 were included in the final descriptive and qualitative analysis, showing an exponential growth in scientific papers. While still vaguely defined and poorly theorised, AI literacy materialises into different AI curricula and technology-supported teaching activities. The GeST analysis indicates that AI literacy is primarily viewed as a set of measurable skills related to generalisable theoretical knowledge that is expected to make children more competitive in a globalised and technologised world. Although some papers consider empowering students with specific competencies to challenge the AI development, critical considerations of AI in education is less visible. The paper highlights the necessity to steer the conceptualisation of AI literacy to put a stronger emphasis on critical orientations that enable students as well as teachers to examine claims about AI, and pose ethical questions to its adoption and use in classrooms and beyond.