Prompting the prompter’s imaginations: how visual generative AI comes to matter

This doctoral research project iexplores the space of friction that occurs between the prompters’ imaginaries and the systems’ representations when the expectations aren’t met, as well as an investigation into the practices that the prompters employ to shape the systems’ output to correspond to their imaginaries. My research into visual generative AI takes into account the practices and imaginaries of the prompters as they continuously work to renegotiate what representations are possible with the tools they have at their disposal. Analysing the practices surrounding the generation of synthetic media becomes a site for exposing the limitations and representations of the AI models and ultimately what knowledge is perpetuated and enabled by these tools. Through the prompters I am able to explore the limitations and the epistemic infrastructure of the AI systems and tools.