AI and Visual Culture: Rethinking Perception at Festivalfilosofia 2024

On September 15, 2024, at the Festivalfilosofia in Sassuolo, Antonio Somaini, a professor at Université Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle, presented a lecture entitled "Frontiere della percezione. Intelligenza artificiale e cultura visuale." He examined how technical media have historically influenced perception, connecting discussions from the 1920s and 1930s about new media to the current changes brought by AI. Somaini identified two significant AI trends: machine vision systems for data extraction and generative AI models like Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Midjourney, Gen-3, and Sora, which produce images from text. He also pointed out the work of artists such as Hito Steyerl and Trevor Paglen, who critique themes of surveillance and copyright, urging a reevaluation of image and creativity in relation to AI, echoing Benjamin's insights on perception.