Ideologically, generative AI is a 19th century technology: the flawed dream that once you have assembled a supposedly total archive of culture via technical media, you can use it to statistically derive new meaning from patterns of the past
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Roland Meyer
@bildoperationen@tldr.nettime.org
mastodon 4.6.8+glitchI am a media and visual culture scholar interested in the history, theory, and aesthetics of #operativeimages. Among other stuff, I have written on the (pre-)history of #facialrecognition & its contemporary implications.
Currently, I am an assistant professor for digital arts and cultures at the University of Zurich and the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)
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OpenAI's sudden discontinuation of its video model #Sora, just a few months after a spectacular deal with Disney, shows just how little these AI companies care about their so-called products. AI video apps, to quote @hito@tldr.nettime.org Steyerl, are «onboarding tools» — their purpose is more ideological than commercial.
Rather than offering revenue-generating services (OpenAI is burning money with every single Sora generated clip), these apps are designed to accustom us to a world in which so-called generative AI seems inevitable — and to provide investors with impressive demonstrations of these models' performance.
In other words, companies like OpenAI do not develop consumer products; they merely launch demos that can be retracted once they have fulfilled their purpose. Never mind that, in the meantime, they are flooding our media landscape with a deluge of #slop and destroying entire cultural sectors in the process.
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What is called AI today is, in some ways, the combination of big data, machine learning and the ideology of scaling. In this respect, AI is not merely a technology (that would be machine learning), but an assemblage of cultural, economical, infrastructural and ideological dimensions.
Each of these dimension has been subject to substantial critique: data extractivism, the devaluation of creative labor, large-scale exploitation of workers, neo-colonial expansion, the wasteful consumption of natural resources, as well as the TESCREAL ideologies fueling the development.
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In its current form, what is called AI – again, not reducible to machine learning technologies – is a product of platform capitalism, and its large-scale implementation is used to solidify dominant and increasingly monopolistic power and property relations. Of course, this has to be rejected. Are different ways of developing machine learning possible? Maybe, but hardly under current political and economic conditions. Many critiquing AI remember the promises once attached to the open web – actively destroyed by the very same actors now pushing AI.
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Was mich an diesem Text noch mehr nervt als die wiederholt aufgewärmte Cybersyn-Nostalgie und die komplette Ignoranz gegenüber jeglichen ökologischen Fragen ist das vollkommene Desinteresse an den konkreten Funktionsweisen von Technologien
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https://jacobin.de/artikel/die-linke-braucht-eine-eigene-zukunftsvision-fuer-ki
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No one would, for example, mistake Gericault’s «Raft of the Medusa» for a document of the actual events it was based on. These AI-generated images actually have more in common with history paintings or movie productions than with documentary photography. Unlike paintings or movies, however, they are created instantly, spread immediately, and compete with real news photos for our attention on the same channels and platforms.
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Annika Brockschmidt beschreibt in diesem erschütternden Artikel das Ausmass, in dem US-Regierungsaccounts Neo-Nazi-Content verbreiten. Ich durfte auch meine Einschätzungen beitragen https://www.volksverpetzer.de/analyse/us-regierung-neo-nazi-content/
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Compared to the actual footage, which in this case, NASA shared on a Flickr account, the AI versions are often more dramatic, cinematic, and optimized for social media clickbait. Perhaps we will become accustomed to these types of images and recognize them for what they are: generic, more or less realistic visualizations of headlines and trending topics, not unlike earlier forms of imagery.
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Für die @woz@troet.cafe darf ich in einer neuen Online-Kolumne alle zwei Wochen über #Slopaganda schreiben. Los geht‘s mit den Basics: Was ist eigentlich Slopaganda? https://www.woz.ch/kolumnen/2026/05/08/slopaganda-was-ist-slopaganda
The largest infrastructure projects currently being built in the US appear to be data centers and detention centers. The AI boom has coincided with ICE becoming the most heavily funded government agency. It's hard not to see a connection: This is the architecture of digital fascism https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-29/us-spends-hundreds-of-millions-on-warehouses-for-ice-detention-centers
«In the early 2000s, as something of a human annotator avant la lettre, Farocki was hardly able to imagine the drudgery of today’s extraction and exploitation in an AI industry that had not yet arisen. He couldn’t yet relate it to the living labor—rendered invisible, though increasingly organized—in the archipelago of sweatshops and the globally distributed ‹computer vision lab› where click workers and content moderators toil in the Global South.
... Nevertheless, Farocki clearly recognized how images used in operations function as effective means of exclusion, destruction, and the rendering invisible of entire populations.» (Tom Holert) #OperativeImages
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@hito@tldr.nettime.org Thank you! Totally agree, although I'd see «onboarding» as a continuous process. Academia is still in the middle of it, and although the war machine is the big prize, the tech companies are also highly interested in education and universities, because it easily scales and provides secure revenue once the institutions are on board (and they are eager to get on board)
Nicolas Gourault's fantastic short experimental documentary film «Their Eyes» about the invisible human labor behind AI, which we showed and discussed at our «React & Respond» conference in Zurich last year, is now streaming on the NYT website https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/opinion/ai-self-driving-cars-workers.html
I say this more to myself than to anyone else, but if the critical study of digital cultures doesn't help us understand and hopefully even confront the conditions of the rise of digital fascism, it remains a purely academic distraction
Mit Max Oppel vom «Kompressor» im Deutschlandfunk Kultur durfte ich über generative KI im Histotainment sprechen. Ich war skeptisch, der Moderator wiederum eher skeptisch, was meine Skepsis betraf, und so wurde ein hoffentlich recht lebhaftes Gespräch daraus. Ganz ohne bewegte Bilder und synthetische Animationen https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/ki-im-histotainment-wie-sieht-das-aus-sollte-das-so-aussehen-100.html
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@hito@tldr.nettime.org That might be a main reason OpenAI discontinues Sora and focuses on ChatGPT - AI video generation ist not only extremely expensive, it's also hard to sell as anything else than a gadget, at least when you're aiming at government contracts (first, they tried to promote it as decisive step to a «world model», but I never heard about that one again)
Save the Date: «Schreibt KI Geschichte? Künstliche Intelligenz in der historisch-politischen Bildung», Tagung der Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, Potsdam, 17. – 18. Juni 2026
https://www.ghwk.de/de/blog/schreibt-ki-geschichte
Full-time position as University Professor of ‹Interface Cultures/Critical Data› at the University of Arts Linz, starting on 1 October 2025, digital applications are to be sent by 7 February 2025
#JobAlert
https://www.kunstuni-linz.at/en/current/jobs/tender/universitaetsprofessur-fuer-interface-cultures-critical-data-nach-98-ug-2002
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@kommaKucken@ruhr.social @Aubrieta@social.tchncs.de Oh yes, of course
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@hito@tldr.nettime.org That'd be interesting, do you have any sources on how this might continue and/or is already in use? I always thought it was more of a unfulfilled promise, given all the physical inconsistencies and instabilities of AI video
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@muellerwhh@sueden.social Seltsam, bei mir funktioniert der Link einwandfrei - ansonsten ist der @Volksverpetzer@digitalcourage.social für die Seite zuständig, nicht ich ...
Für @ndaktuell@troet.cafe hab ich etwas über KI-Bildgenerierung als Klischeeverstärker, das vermeintliche »Ende der Wahrheit« und die Entwertung kreativer Arbeit geschrieben https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1173690.digitalisierung-digitale-kunst-bildermaschinen.html
Very much looking forward to this event: «AS WE MAY SEE. Tracking and Tracing the Image after Farocki», October 30 - November 1. Come join us in Zurich to convene, think, and discuss the complex and contradictory state of the technical image today!
»Das Lächeln der KI« – ich war gestern im Deutschlandfunk Kultur in der schönen Sendung »Kompressor« zu Gast und durfte mit Gesa Ufer über KI-generierte Selfies, algorithmisch verstärkte Klischees und Stereotypen, Risiken und Probleme der Emotionserkennung sowie darüber reden, wie Programme wie Midjourney unsere Vorstellung von Geschichte verändern. Das Gespräch lässt sich nun nachhören. https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/american-smile-das-laecheln-der-ki-podcast-dlf-kultur-49bda825-100.html
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@Earl@mast.john1126.com Yes. Also, please compare it to the NASA photographs
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@klaus_hammer@ruhr.social Für die Seite bin ich nicht zuständig, bei mir funktioniert der Link
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@klaus_hammer@ruhr.social Freut mich!