Hito Steyerl's 'Medium Hot' Examines AI's Impact on Image-Making and Exploitation

Hito Steyerl's 2025 essay collection, 'Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat,' examines the impact of AI on visual culture, along with its social and environmental repercussions. Renowned for her previous works, 'This Is The Future' (2019) and 'Animal Spirits' (2022), Steyerl critiques AI's 'artificial stupidity' and exploitative tendencies through thermodynamic imagery. She references major corporations such as Microsoft, Google, and Apple, while also spotlighting human labor in conflict zones like Syria and Palestine. The book addresses military AI applications, the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials, and AI image generators like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. Connecting these issues to her concept of 'poor images,' Steyerl discusses surveillance technologies targeting Uyghurs and advocates for collective action, though she provides limited solutions, stressing the importance of ethical responsibility in visual culture.