This blog post is an excerpt from my doctoral dissertation, "'What makes a great story?': Multidisciplinary and international perspectives on digital stories created by youth formerly in foster care in Canada" (York University, 11 Apr. The debate about whether or not to work with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies because they are "good," or "bad" is overly simplistic and lacks a critical lens. As history conveys, one can infer that artists and technologists are going to try working with AI despite, or because of these challenges. AI systems like "Dall:E" that translate words and sentences into images, have solidified concerns about representation, specifically of gender and race raised early in the advent of AI-based data visualization (Nicholas, 2022). Nevertheless, I believe that it is necessary for women and non-binary people -- especially racialized women -- to begin to explore these technologies as a way of claiming this space and defining the ethical implications of AI.

The recent boom in artificial intelligence has produced impressive results in a somewhat surprising realm: the world of image and video generation. The latest example comes from chip designer Nvidia, which today published research showing how AI-generated visuals can be combined with a traditional video game engine. The result is a hybrid graphics system that could one day be used in video games, movies, and virtual reality. "It's a new way to render video content using deep learning," Nvidia's vice president of applied deep learning, Bryan Catanzaro, told The Verge. "Obviously Nvidia cares a lot about generating graphics [and] we're thinking about how AI is going to revolutionize the field."