Paper short abstract:

The presentation explores the co-construction of AI systems and users in cultural production. Drawing on in-depth interviews with professionals and STS concepts from user studies, it identifies distinct co-construction patterns, offering a nuanced understanding of human-machine collaboration.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation addresses issues related to how Generative AI (GenAI) systems and their users shape each other in the context of cultural production. It raises the question of how STS can provide a nuanced understanding of the socio-technical practices through which human and non-human actors establish relationships in situated contexts, focusing in particular on professional users in the cultural industries who have integrated GenAI systems into their work. In doing so, it adopts the perspective of the “co-construction” of users and technology (Oudshoorn & Pinch 2003) to highlight the different geographies of responsibility that emerge from the interactions between GenAI systems and their users, and shows how adopting an STS perspective on the user-technology relationship can help deconstruct simplistic interpretations of AI systems as neutral “tools” or, on the contrary, as heroic “autonomous agents”, which characterize widespread interpretations of the use of AI in art and cultural production. Drawing on insights from in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with professionals within the Italian context, the presentation aims to shed light on the ways in which GenAI users can be configured by design, but also renegotiate their role by de-inscribing AI technology, developing anti-programs, and organizing movements of technological resistance. The findings reveal distinct patterns of co-construction, highlighting the need to problematize human-machine “collaboration” in the context of cultural production.