AI – a modern day πρῶτος
GBS PAPERs
I want to Alter the Reality
written by subalekha
issue 1 MARCH 2024
Πρωτεύς – PROTEUS - In Greek mythology, Proteus is the god of "elusive sea change”. He can foretell the future but will change his shape to avoid doing so; he answers only to those who are capable of capturing him.In Ancient Greek, Πρωτεύς / Proteus exists as a mystery. He knew the past, present and future and shifted into many forms. He was elusive and yet served the higher purpose of prophecy and revealing the truth.
June 8th 2023, multiple news outlets featured the images used for election campaigning, “AI-generated” was repeated multiple times to capture the delinquency of the narrative. It is 2024, and we are well aware of the omnipresence of AI in the media we consume. Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan writer in his book El libro de los Abrazos (The book of embraces) quotes this African proverb – "Hasta que los leones tengan sus propios historiadores, las historias de cacería seguirán glorificando al cazador."
“Until lions have their own historians, histories of the hunt will glorify the hunter.”
An african PRoverb
Let us take a journey through different moments in history where image manipulation has been key in shaping political narratives.
“With the help from the analogue technologies of scalpel, glue, paint, and airbrush, Stalin would remove ‘disloyal’ Soviet comrades.”⁹
“1942: In order to create a more heroic portrait of himself, Benito Mussolini had the horse handler removed from the original photograph.”⁴
“a popular image of Abraham Lincoln is actually his head grafted to the more majestic body of John Calhoun, a senator and vice president.”⁶Looking at the recent history where image manipulation is used as a means to rewrite history and alter public perception, Generative AI can be seen as a natural next step that saves time and offers better results than its predecessor tools in the Political Media Landscape.
When the odds aren’t in our favor? How quickly would we wish they would change?
When are we the lion and when are we the hunter?
And when are just another sheep painting our skin and putting on A wig, hoping to be seen as the lion?
The discussion has been inundated withIs this ethical?
Is AI disrupting and creating space for unfair practices?
Could we take this focus away for a moment and widen our perspective by going further into the history of image manipulation?Propaganda. why?
Photo-manipulation as a way of controlling the narrative has been used for decades. Although Mussolini and Stalin might have used it for one-way communication, Propaganda, the resulting action ranged from capturing votes to unwavering adulation.I feel betrayed.
But someone whose trust has been broken multiple times could fear the worst might happen to them again. These photos of an embrace and a kiss hints at a classic sign of betrayal. When shown to the right person it has the power to evoke negative emotions ranging from anger to despair and most likely FEAR of it happening again.ready to react.
Now the audience, primed for a reaction, can receive any message that follows this imagery as a sense of solace and saving grace out of their current situation.
Now where have we seen this before?Tired of wrinkles? Look great at 30.
There is another area where such propaganda has had a lucrative run. Beauty Industry with a little help from Magazines and Digital Media. Let us take a very brief look at the history.
Magazines Set New Standards.
In 2003 – This cover of GQ magazine featured a
digitally slimmed actress Kate Winslet. Winslet said that the retouching was "excessive." "I don't look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that. I can tell you that they've reduced the size of my legs by about a third", said Winslet.⁴ Let's say the Magazine cover sold X copies, Kate's words possibly reached a tiny fraction of X, if that.
consumer companies follow.
Beauty Companies have spent decades selling products to customers using digitally altered photographs setting unrealistic standards until recently larger organizations like CVS have started to volunteer information when a photo has been digitally altered, with studies showing that it doesn't help the self-esteem of women.⁷
Resulting Action.
Purchase. Where voting was the resulting success metric in Politics. In reaching beauty standards, there is one path outlined by companies as well as magazines funded by their ad revenues to achieve it. It is to make a purchase with a promise that some day the desired outcome could be achieved.
Propaganda only goes so far as it only works on capturing the attention of the ones who are vulnerable to it. In order to gain mass support in today's well-informed world, it is essential to understand individual needs and tailor the story to each animal in the jungle to speak to its unique highs and lows.
Welcome to the Social Media era.
Everything is interactive. Allowing the audience to feel a sense of agency and urgency. For media companies and beauty industries, it is not just about featuring a message, it is about engagement. Going beyond the usual narratives and social conditioning, this new form requires the audience to be solicited through various points of microaction.
Every like, repost, forward counts as a microaction building a self-engaged narrative. With the internet and social media, there is a possibility to create targeted narratives that please each person not only on an individual level but also on a deeply emotional level. Dangerously enough microaction opens one's brain reward system making them vulnerable to the possibility of behavior modification. If we extend the ideas presented around the usage of filters in 2011 and confirmation bias⁸, today every microaction we invest (our time, emotional energy and intellect)in however small is driven by similar filtering methods, further extending our confirmation bias.
In a world that feels increasingly lonely, what is something that targets YOUR needs and says “I see you, I feel you, I got you” worth to you? to Us?
find my cookies, find me.
Our search terms and digital consumption holds the secret key to what we are preoccupied with. Things we worry could happen to us personally, our intimate circle and our values that we care about at large. Things we are excited about, look forward to. Things that have already happened to us.invitation for microaction.
With unique access to personalized data, depending on the time of the day and the observed mood of the user, a political image or a “do you look good enough” content can be shared to invite the micro-action.
What drew a circle and marked our features as insecurities also goes one step further to offer us a way to overcome it.a moment of empowerment.
What is offered as a solution and a means of momentary empowerment (in this ad-driven, sponsored digital adventure) happens to be something that invariably rewards the proponent– financially, politically, materially or otherwise.As Beauty standards keep shifting and after many decades the laws and the market interests are slowly adding guard rails to that industry, can we pause now to wonderWhy did a political campaign imagery aided AI rub us the wrong way, while the beauty industry has used manipulation as a way to set standards to advocate to a particular gender for ages?
Why are we quick to internalize, Am I pretty enough?
vs. outwardly express our fury in this case, am I taken for a ride?
The questions may be different but fuel a collection of overlapping deeper emotions. Insecurity. Lack of Agency.
When humans manipulate us, we have grown to see it as normal.
“Yes, obviously to sell a product one has to involve certain marketing strategies” But when an AI aids it, we somehow feel more cheated (maybe it is the novelty of it).When we hear potential lies thrown around, or see images altered of Stalin it was ok.
“Yes, it is politics, people say things, people do things". But when an impeccable image shows up aided by AI.
It is not just an altered image that has removed a person or added a person or airbrushed the wrinkles away or added a wig.
It has created something with emotional impact. It has impeccably created a narrative, an action shot. We feel something because the subjects are feeling something.
The line between reality and fiction starts to blur.
“Am I seeing this right?”
Has AI done something that a million disclaimers, enforced laws failed to do?
Made us pause and self reflect on what we consume and why?
Has this Πρωτεύς by revealing himself helped us see our prophecy?
Finally is AI the new historian making the lion and the sheep and everything in between wonder, who has been writing our books?who has been drawing our destiny? do we still trust our eyes?
REFERENCES & INSPIRATIONS
The Book of Embraces – Eduardo Galeano
Georgia Institute of Technology: Photo Tampering Throughout History
The filter bubble: How the new personalized web is changing what we read and how we think, E Pariser 2011
Image Credit: Veep
Image Credit: Anna Hill
Image Credit: NYTimes, Pete Gamlen
Image Credit: CVS
Image Credit: GQ
Image Credit: YMIJAN
Image Credit: Scott Olson | Getty Images
gif Credit: GIPHY
Special thanks to Emil Bjerg for the early research.
AI – a modern day सोम
issue 1 feb 2024
Issue 1
Exploring the intersection of AI, Culture, Patterns & Possibilities across all disciplines.
