Machine-designed statistical renderings, or visual culture in the service of artificial intelligence

Abstract

We exist in a reality shaped by the digital mediation of our activities. We use software applications and online services. Our texts, emails, messages, works, and photographs circulate in virtual clouds, forming databases for technological corporations. We often use artificial intelligence without even being aware of it. Meanwhile, increasing traces of our privacy and intimacy—in the form of behavioral and biometric data—feed large foundational models, creating the so-called „ground truth.” Based on this, subsequent methods of statistical prediction and pattern optimization generate new visions of reality, pieced together from fragments of our virtual presence on platforms. Generative artificial intelligence—including large language models and machine learning algorithms used in facial recognition systems—depends on the information we habitually, commonly, and voluntarily share in the online space. The article addresses the issue of data circulation and what happens to it once it has been absorbed by technological systems.