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Paper short abstract

As generations Z and Alpha in Britain have increasingly engaged with AI in their daily lives, there is much that we older generations can learn from them. This paper draws from recent research with young Brits to propose a more nuanced understanding the potential of AI tools and images in society.

Paper long abstract

As AI-generated images have entered our everyday production and circulation of images, there has been a tendency in Britain – both through the media and academic studies – either to demonise these emerging technologies or embrace them as inevitable.

Responding to the fields of digital and visual anthropology in its theoretical framework, this paper draws from the findings of two recent studies I have conducted to propose a more complex picture of the way that younger generations are making sense of themselves and the world in relation to their engagement with AI technologies and images.

Firstly, I will present the results from a cohort of young people in the Yorkshire city of Bradford - how both their production of and viewership of GenAI images reveal what an everydayness of the technology can be. These young people approach GenAI with equal curiosity and scepticism. As with much of digital ethnography, we see how this group makes their own meanings from the range of digital technologies in their lives with little hype or fear.

Then, we see how an artist and team of producers are using digital art that entertains and educates young people on the potential applications of AI in surveillance technologies. Through a nationally touring art project, we see how young audiences interact with and reject an overly dystopian depiction of AI. This has led the artist to consider how AI can be used instead as a tool 'to make us more human' for deeper forms of connection.