At the symposium «From Hype to Reality: AI in the Study of Art and Culture», organised by the Ambizione research project «The Canon of Latent Spaces» and the DSI Community Digital Humanities, Lars Pinkwart will present on generative AI and the optimization of culture.
Not only have the outputs of generative AI models come to shape contemporary popular culture, they have also further emphasized how artefacts of popular culture as content – created for shareability and attention – are already products of the political economy of platform capitalism. Generative AI is accelerating, automating and maxxing these tendencies: where it was once essential to game the algorithm to achieve engagement and cultural relevance, now the maximization of one's own presence and distinctiveness in future training data becomes central. Maximal replication (itself enabled by generative models promising infinite variability) as well as aesthetic exaggeration of distinct features bring forth a mode of memetic struggle for «cultural survival». The presentation reads these tendencies alongside concrete artefacts from digital visual cultures.
The symposium brings together researchers working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital humanities, art history, and cultural studies. The aim of this event is to discuss the various aspects of contemporary AI technologies, particularly in relation to the study of art and culture. Through a series of presentations, we aim to approach AI as both an instrument and object of cultural analysis, highlighting its capacity to reveal new patterns and forms of expression while investigating its epistemic limits, ethical implications, and embedded cultural assumptions. The 2025 edition of From Hype to Reality: AI in the Study of Art and Culture extends the discussions initiated in the 2023 edition. The presentations are organized into four sessions that thematically examine representation and bias in AI systems, methodological innovations in digital cultural analysis, and critical perspectives on how AI structures cultural knowledge and creative production.