A conversation between WJT Mitchell and Roger Canals
The emergence of images generated by artificial intelligence has intensified the age-old debate about trust and distrust in images. Many in journalism and documentary filmmaking have raised concerns about the dangers of misinformation and social manipulation posed by AI-generated images that look like photographs. In the world of art, AI could challenge notions of authorship and individual creativity, not to mention the legal issues surrounding copyright. The examples of the supposed dangers of AI are countless. Visual deception seems to be, at least potentially, everywhere. How do we relate to and through images in this new visual ecology?
Starting from the significant increase in AI-generated images, in this talk, WJT Mitchell and Roger Canals, PI of the ERC project Visual Trust, discussed about (mis)trust in images in our time by addressing, in a rigorous and yet accessible way, a wide range of images with which we interact in our everyday life: from scientific images of distant galaxies to religious or artistic images, medical images and images of family and friends.
The conversation showed that the debate about (mis)trust in images and visual evidence is not new but a central element of our visual experience. It also demonstrated how, despite the current rhetoric about visual distrust and with all their nuances and paradoxes, images are fundamental to our everyday experience. We live with and through images, and it is largely them that we come to know and transform the world, relate to others, and imagine the future that awaits us.
This conversation took place at the CCCB (Center for Contemporary Culture) of Barcelona on the 10th of November 2023 within the frame of the ERC-Consolidator Grant: Visual Trust. Reliability, accountability and forgery in scientific, religious and social images (2021-2026, PI: Roger Canals).
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