Jouer contre l’IA : Pratiques artistiques et contrefactualisation
Images generated by artificial intelligence are often designed to imitate photography, creating the illusion of a direct connection to reality. Yet, several contemporary artists have begun to explore alternative potentials of these technologies by embracing the fictional dimension inherent in AI-generated images. Through careful manipulation of prompts, artists such as Seumboy Vrainom :€ and Mayara Ferrão produce visual fictions that give voice to marginalized histories, highlight invisibilized figures, and imagine possible pasts that were never documented. These practices can be understood as acts of counterfactualization, aiming to expose the biases and power structures embedded in historical archives and the datasets used to train AI.
Beyond prompt manipulation, artists like Minne Atairu and Nora Al-Badri interrogate and subvert our shared collections of representations, particularly those assembled by museums through processes structured by spoliation and colonial extraction by intervening directly in the creation of AI training dataset. Such approaches embody what Vilém Flusser described as the capacity to “play against the apparatus”: redirecting technical devices from their normative uses to generate new creative and critical perspectives. Rather than rejecting these technologies, these artists engage with them as fields of contestation, transforming instruments that might perpetuate domination into tools for critique and political reappropriation.
Hallucinations techno-imaginaires : une critique flussérienne des systèmes d'IA générative / Tecnoimaginando alucinações : uma critica flusseriana aos sistemas de IA generativa
The article examines so-called hallucinations in generative artificial intelligence models through the lens of Vilém Flusser’s philosophy of technology, interpreting them not merely as technical failures but as revealing symptoms of the structure and normativity of these systems. Drawing on Flusser’s notion of the apparatus as a black box, the article establishes a parallel between the photographic apparatus and AI models, whose internal functioning remains opaque to both users and developers. The text critiques the anthropomorphic use of the term “hallucination,” arguing that it euphemizes systemic errors and obscures their epistemological presuppositions. In contrast, hallucinations are understood as productive failures capable of exposing biases, regimes of truth, and economies of meaning within generative models. Mobilizing the concept of techno-imagination, the article analyzes artistic and poetic practices that deliberately explore these deviations as ways of playing against the apparatus’s program. It concludes that such practices establish zones of friction in which provisional modes of critical freedom vis-à-vis contemporary apparatuses can still be rehearsed.