Abstract

Since the beginning of the 2010s, the vast field of digital images has been increasingly impacted by different kinds of deep-learning algorithms—one of the forms of so-called artificial intelligence (AI)—that profoundly transform the ways in which images are captured, generated, modified, and seen. I describe the main kinds of deep-learning algorithms that are behind the current transformations and explain in simple terms how they function and how they have been applied within visual culture at large and within a series of contemporary artistic practices that may be particularly relevant in helping us navigate this new landscape. The impact of these algorithms on images is so profound that it raises a series of key aesthetic, epistemological, ontological, and political questions that need to be tackled from both theoretical and media-archaeological perspectives.