Synthetic Aesthetics: AI-generated photos and their lives on Instagram

Current debates on the role of AI in contemporary visual media culture focus on questions about creativity and ownership and, on the other hand, on concerns about truth and the inauthenticity of visual content. These academic and public debates emphasize AI's potential and actual impact on those who produce imagery for a living or, conversely, on the public who view and consume media imagery. With this project, we would like to take a step back and examine AI-generated photography from the bottom up, starting from the oxymoronic hashtag #AIphotography on Instagram. Through AI-specific digital and visual methods (such as machine vision and reverse-engineering prompts) and close reading of image collections, we aim to understand how AI-generated imagery performs its photographic aesthetic.

This research contributes to knowledge of the work that goes into producing generative imagery, thus allowing us to understand better the creative practices underlying AI’s photographic aesthetic. In doing so, this project also engages with AI in its own right as a method to uncover and reflect on the photographic ‘status’ of generative imagery.