Paper short abstract:

Discourses of AI promise technologies of visual "understanding" trained on "realistic" images. However there is a complicated relationship between images and truth. We argue that the field has a positivist theory of images divorced from anthropology's understanding of technology and reality.

Paper long abstract:

Discourses of Computer Vision (CV) technologies promise to "transform" how humans and computers interact with their environments through the analysis of "raw perceptual information". However these emerging technologies often rely on a small number of image datasets developed, predominantly, by a handful of elite Western institutions. These image datasets encode a range of social and cultural biases, including western-centric sources, English-language metadata, and underrepresentation of minoritized groups. In response, in recent years the CV discipline has spent significant effort on building image datasets which are larger, more realistic, and more diverse. By doing so, the narrative goes, image datasets can be sufficient proxies of the world that technologies trained on them achieve "visual understanding". However the meaning of each image is assumed to be encoded within the image itself. In adopting these narratives, discourses and practices of CV have constructed theories of images and image interpretation which contrast with understandings of these as cultural artefacts and culturally situated processes. Drawing inspiration from Diana Forsythe's study of the construction of knowledge in Artificial Intelligence, this paper analyses CV discourse to shed light on AI's construction of images, and their relationship with truth. We analyse CV's accounts of image production and normative image ideals, as well as accounts of the relationship between images, truth and reality. We reveal an underlying positivist theory of images and their truth which is divorced from accounts of interpretation and meaning central to anthropology's understanding of technology and the social world.

Paper short abstract:

Digital images of the Artificial Facial Recognition Technology enabled CCTVs have rapidly emerged as a popular policing technique in New Delhi since 2019. This paper looks at the legal ‘ways of seeing’ during the creation of image for a ‘good’ citizen and how it constitutes ‘law by other means.’

Paper long abstract:

With 1862.6 CCTVs per mile, New Delhi is the site of greatest government surveillance project internationally, which was initiated in 2019 by its Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal to help in fighting crime. During the same year, on 28th June 2019, a tender for acquiring ‘Automated Facial Recognition Technology System’ (FRT) was floated on behalf of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) “for “criminal identification, verification and its dissemination among various police organisations and units across the country.”” The CCTVs equipped with Artificial Face Recognition Technology (AFRT) thus, bring to the fore the use of Artificial Technology as a means of delivering justice in country in general and New Delhi in particular. Situated within this context, the present paper attempts to critique such uncritical use of new technology systems as a means of mapping criminality. It ‘looks’ into how a gaze of camera categorically renders the body of citizen-subject as criminal in a digital database, as visual persuasion furbishes a process of governance that the state deems as just and good. In doing so, it shall unpack as to how new policing techniques are being mobilized in creation of a biometric state raising implications for privacy issues. This rise of the AI-enabled ethnographic state in this manner reveals how the ocular-centric capital of the CCTVs pivots on the promise of an efficient digital future, imaging ‘ways to see’, positing itself as currency of modern state rule, and ‘law by other means’.

Paper short abstract:

Based on observations in meeting points between smart city stakeholders (high-tech entrepreneurs and public sector employees), the paper shows how they function as storytellers who use future scenarios and visualizations to advance their interests.

Paper long abstract:

Many cities around the world have been defined as “Smart Cities.” While there is no single agreed-upon definition of the term, most definitions refer to cities that implement digital technology applications as a solution to concerns arising from population growth, and as a tool for improving efficiency, governance, and the quality of life in the city. Smart City advocates promote this techno-utopianism by highlighting the ways that techno-scientific solutions of digital intelligence can yield economic, environmental, and social benefits in future-focused scenarios. At the same time, there is a great deal of criticism of such projects. This paper focuses on gaps between visual presentations of smart city systems and the reality on the ground. The paper is based on visual analysis of observations conducted in several meeting points between high-tech entrepreneurs and public sector employees (in exhibitions, conferences, seminars, meetups and hackathons), and of promotional materials distributed by stakeholders. As I will show, one of the salient features of the habitus developed in this field is that entrepreneurs, and gradually also public sector employees, function in these situations as storytellers who use future scenarios and visualizations to advance their interests, while description and analysis of the past and the present becoming redundant. According to the dominant storyline, in order to cope with the increase in the number of city dwellers, cities must be made more intelligent by digital technology.

Paper short abstract:

The rise of virtual influencers in social media marketing around the world has entered contemporary consumer life, becoming one of the significant shifts in the post-human world. This paper aims to explore the relationship between virtual influencers and cultural-based studies of images.

Paper long abstract:

Amid the sweeping technological transformations of recent decades, the rise of virtual influencers, computer-generated characters that are designed to attract followers and 'likes', in social media marketing around the world has entered contemporary consumer life, becoming one of the significant shifts in the post-human world. This paper aims to address the need to bring the phenomenon into the light and to stimulate interest in theoretically and empirically grounded in debate about it. It also aims to explore the relationship between virtual influencers and cultural-based studies of images. The purpose of this paper is to address the question: do these images form a basis for sites of social interaction amongst informants or between researched and researcher?

The body of this paper consists of four sections. The first section briefly describes computer-generated imagery (CGI). The second section introduces the concept of virtual influencers. The third section is devoted to presenting a case study of popular Instagram virtual influencers. The fourth and final section highlights the discussion of theoretical and practical implications. By employing a diversity of possible modes in which virtual influencers are designed, and their Instagram images are produced, consumed, and negotiated, the paper argues that the phenomena is a useful tool for providing critical insights into the swiftly shifting landscape of digital visual anthropology and aspects of ethnographic knowledge and methodological tools.

Paper short abstract:

The proposed paper looks at the use of the smartphone by Greek women who consume cosmetic injectables, and explores how the phone becomes a tool for tracking transformations, designing the ‘perfect look’, and preserving the real self.

Paper long abstract:

Mobile phones provide entertainment and information (Hoffner, Sangmi and Park 2000), but have now also become essential tools in the day-to-day management of one’s life, to the point where the phone ends up being an extension of the self. The proposed paper is a result of long-term participant observation amongst Greek women who consume cosmetic injectable products, and explores how the use of the smartphone’s camera and the photo gallery assists these women in tracking, assessing, and designing the ‘perfect look’. It also looks into the ways the phone becomes an objective mirror through which they view themselves. Due of the continuous and repetitive nature of cosmetic injectables, the women I study see the phone as a necessary tool in the tracking of their transformations and in keeping their self “in check” as to not “go overboard” with their treatments. Multiple and repetitive transformations on their faces and bodies often end up causing a loss of objectivity, which the phone’s images help preserve. The use of the smartphone then, becomes central in the quest to preserve the 'real' self while undergoing repetitive transformations. Through storing virtual "copies" of the self in the different stages of the journey of constant transformation, the phone has acquired yet another means of becoming an extension of the self.