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.