Ctrl.Alt.Img

The future is being visualised by artificial intelligence. Many of the images we see every day on social media and in the news are being created by algorithms and image-generation apps. Image banks, news outlets and social media companies are turning to technologies like Dall-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion to visualise the world around us. This development has an enormous influence on visual culture and our collective consciousness, but what will the world look like through the eyes of AI? And will the average person on the street have any influence on the outcome?

For underrepresented groups, this AI leap into the future further deepens the digital and social divide  

Ctrl.Alt.Img was born out of research by photographer Çiğdem Yüksel about the representation of muslim women in the Dutch media. Çiğdem noticed that she didn’t recognise herself (or her mother or sister) in the photos often used in the media to represent muslim women. These images always seemed to share similar qualities: a veiled woman from behind, taken at a distance, often-times with a shopping bag in hand or at a market. Muslim women at work, doing sports or pictured in the context of education were rare. Çiğdem asked: If new machine learning tools are being trained on existing datasets with the old social biases, then how can we future-proof AI images to be more inclusive?

AI can increase the risk of misclassification and underrepresentation while strengthening long-held stereotypes.

Ctrl.Alt.Img is a creative intervention using existing AI tools like text-to-image apps to explore more inclusive approaches to image making. The project kicked off in 2023 with two interventions. 

The first intervention is a Ctrl.Alt.Img travelling interactive booth that mimics the form and dynamics of a playful photo booth. The booth invites participants to be photographed and analysed by AI while also presenting fleeting documentary footage. This footage offers a compelling first-hand account of how bias affects religious and ethnic-minority communities. Participants leave the booth with a printed memento capturing a photograph and an AI-generated image of themselves.  

The second intervention is a browser plugin aimed at professionals and creatives who often use image banks as part of their work. The browser plugin nudges professionals such as art directors and photo editors towards more inclusive stock images from alternative image banks when performing an image search. Media professionals have little time for image selection, so the browser plugin lightens the load by suggesting a fast alternative with more representative stock images. The browser plugin is in developer mode at the moment and available on request.

Ctrl.Alt.Img can be experienced at FOAM photography museum in Amsterdam from June 1 - September 12 2024.

CREDITS
Ctrl.Alt.Img was initiated by photographer Çiğdem Yüksel, designed, researched and produced by affect lab in collaboration with  documentary house  Prospektor and creative technologist Babusi Nyoni (Triple Black).
Graphic design by Sasha Fominskaya
Installation design by Studio Stam
Special thanks to our documentary participants:  Thomas Roebers; Oumaima Hajri; Tanguy Lebreton; Zahra Ahmadi; Mohamed Bah; Melike Tarim and Ramsay Drover.
Supported by  Creative Industries Fund NL and MediaFutures.