Paper Short Abstract:

Using GenAI can help us co-produce, rewrite, or “unwrite” with participants the dominant AgeTech futures that these tools tend to perpetuate, often rooted in ageist visions. Drawing on futures-oriented fieldwork using GenAI images with older adults in Melbourne, we moved through the images rewriting and unwriting different future meanings, going beyond static and ageist representations of the images and our hyper-realistic presents.

Paper Abstract:

Generative AI (GenAI) is reproducing biased and normative visions of the worlds we inhabit ─including ageist perspectives─ by extracting existing information and rewriting our lived experiences. While such practices raise unethical concerns, I argue that anthropologists who draw on participatory methodological innovation should not be discouraged from engaging critically with this tool. Using GenAI can help us co-produce, rewrite, or “unwrite” with participants the dominant futures that these tools perpetuate. Rooted in a futures-anthropology agenda, I used GenAI images during household visits with older adults in Melbourne, Australia, to reimagine what possible futures we want to live. These engagements were preceded by a research on industry visions through a review of reports and interviews with experts that informed my fieldwork with older adults and generation of GenAI images. The GenAI images generated looked and felt deeply ageist, portraying later life as technologically mediated, frail, and dependent. However, their disconnection from the participants’ everyday future realities created a space to foreground shared priorities and concerns. Together, we reworked these representations, co-producing alternative futures that challenge and transcend the normative visions ingrained in GenAI visions. Far from fixed or static representations, these images became sites of dynamic negotiation ─we moved through the images rewriting and unwriting different meanings, going beyond our hyper-realistic presents.