Creative AI as More-Than-Human
Petra Jääskeläinen · 2024
While the use of AI technologies for artistic and creative practices (Creative AI) has become commonplace in recent years, more-than-human perspectives are slowly making their way into design research. However, the development of Creative AI technologies (and AI in general) is often human-focused and technology-driven, and there are significant efforts in both AI ethics research and the industry to guide it in a human-centred direction. In this light, in my work, I examine Creative AI technologies from the critical perspective of more-than-human design, focusing specifically on aesthetics and cultural imaginaries that are prioritised in their design, and questioning the current assumptions that underlie their design and development approaches. The question of prioritising human versus non-human (and particularly biological non-humans, such as the environment and animals) viewpoints is largely an environmental ethical question, and a question of design ethics of ‘who gets to matter’ in the design of Creative AI technologies. Thus, I discuss how humans and non-humans get to matter when it comes to Creative AI entanglements, looking at relevant examples from the existing technologies and cultures around designing them. The main takeaways of this chapter include questioning and broadening the human-centred framing of Creative AI toward a more-than-human framing, with a specific focus on imaginaries and the aesthetics of Creative AI technologies. More specifically, I will be covering these themes by presenting examples of AI-generated images and visual culture, as well as by covering critical and speculative case studies that focus on artefacts and imaginaries of Creative AI.