In early 2023 an unprecedented number of AI generated images began appearing on social media, ranging from fairly harmless and entertaining ones, like the image of the Pope wearing Balenciaga, to ones with much higher stakes, like the photo of an ‘explosion at the Pentagon’.
While the uncanniness of the pope wearing Balenciaga produced a sensory reaction, immediately awaking attention to the high likelihood of its fakeness, the ‘Pentagon event’ didn’t. The image got shared and reposted, sparking panic and plummeting stocks.
One of the reasons for this absence of uncanny feeling is perhaps the repetitive and passive interactions with the images of catastrophic and extraordinary events in traditional and social media, of ‘eyes that see too much -- and register nothing’ (Buck-Morss, 1992). The lack of an acute uncanny sensation or ‘gut feeling’ response to fake images of catastrophes makes the truth more vulnerable. Upon confirming that the image is fake, articles and essays focusing on the dangers of AI-generated images began appearing online. Despite the fact that in the case of this Pentagon fake, it was not the image itself, but the context of the claim attached to the image that drew the attention of twitter users. Arguably the documentary visual is there not to inform, but to help generate a state of panic (Steyerl, 2015).
[IMAGE]
I would like to propose a different reading of this ‘AI event’ -- away from the techno-doom and towards a definition of new aesthetics of digital facts. In the process I would like to highlight the role of the modes of perceiving, investigative gestures and notations as important aspects of collective sensing and sense-making (Fuller and Weizman, 2021). [Decentering authority of truth comment]
The object of the controversy (the explosion) is impossible to disprove or confirm based on the image alone. Instead, further analysis of the materiality of the image, the reality it portrays, and the interactions of the image as an online artefact need to be taken into account.
Materiality of the image
Upon investigating the images online through reverse image searching, logging of the duplicates, comparing and collaging the original with confirmed photos of the Pentagon and other known explosions, most of the analyses published on twitter, focused on the glitches within the image. The researchers zoomed into high-detail fragments and outlined the boundaries of the impossible geometries they perceived (the phantasmagorias of the bending fence with its fuzzy borders, the delirious architecture of the facade of the supposed Pentagon building) with brightly coloured rectangles -- a visual investigative convention of recording the gesture of organising the perceptual field. [Goodwin]
[IMAGE]
Having the attention drawn to the uncanny artefacts within the image, allows to notice the incoherent reality portrayed by the image: the agency and circumstance of the camera that took the photo, the strangely ordered, frontal framing, the lack of movement in what one would only expect to be a chaotic scene. The detached, disembodied and neutral perspective and composition could be considered yet another way of echoing AI’s persistent erasure of bias (Steyerl, 2023).
In order to regain the ability to sense the uncanniness of fake images (whether they are generated by AI, photoshopped, staged or screenshot from war game simulators), we need to reconsider the structure of digital aesthetics. By seeking out an ever expanding network of connections and gestures that extend from the source image we can enable collective sense-making, akin to a spider casting its web as an extension of its sensory field.
- I am referring here in particular to misinformation using screenshots of war-simulation game Arma 3, in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s offensive in Gaza. France 24. (2023). War-themed video game fuels wave of misinformation. [online] Available at: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230102-war-themed-video-game-fuels-wave-of-misinformation.
- Alemohammad, S., Casco-Rodriguez, J., Luzi, L., Humayun, A.I., Babaei, H., LeJeune, D., Siahkoohi, A. and Baraniuk, R.G. (2023). Self-Consuming Generative Models Go MAD. [online] arXiv.org. doi:https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.01850.
- Fuller, M. and Weizman, E. (2021). Investigative Aesthetics. Verso Books.
- 4. Goodwin, Charles. “Professional Vision.” American Anthropologist, vol. 96, no. 3, Sept. 1994, pp. 606–633, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1994.96.3.02a00100/full, https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1994.96.3.02a00100. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.