Reading AI-generated Speculative Futures in a Digital Visual Age

AI-generated images often are praised for their mere existence and the aesthetic and technical process behind. Overshadowed by concerns of copyright and algorithmic bias, they tend to evade scrutiny regarding the underlying concept and human interventions. Existing literature within art and design fields often places AI either as the central subject or a tool serving creative goals. This paper discusses the standards for evaluating images portraying fictional architecture, alternative world-building, and collective imagination. It examines three project categories that converge on creating speculative futures with varying degrees of plausibility and their circulation on Instagram, which has evolved from a persona platform to a curation-driven community for creators. By reading these projects through the lens of critical speculative design and digital media studies, I question the intention of transparent or anonymous authorship, affective engagement they evoke, ethical implications of generating a racial other (@the_brigadoon_dispatch). I exemplify “image anarchism” with how the Great Wall covered by soft and pink inflatables by @aiforarchitects gained additional meanings through reposts on dissident pages. Amid ongoing criticisms, I question whether speculative design is at an “ image turn”, flattening literary imagination to visual stimuli for consumption, furthering the ocular-centrism of contemporary media cultures, and aestheticizing the sufferings of the remote other (@snapshots_from_a_near_future). The session will reflect on the value of reintroducing serendipity to digital tools, and a process-oriented approach to critical speculation, emphasizing co-creativity and community participation in responding to nuanced socio-political contexts, as a form of care, healing, and intervention for the here and now.