Article: The AI Image, the Dream, and the Statistical Unconscious
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Abstract
As has been remarked several times in the recent past, the images generated by AI systems like DALL·E, Stable Diffusion, or Midjourney have a certain surrealist quality. In the present essay I want to analyze the dreamlike quality of (at least some) AI-generated images. This dreaminess is related to Freud’s com- parison of the mechanism of condensation in dreams with Galton’s composite photography, which he reflected explicitly with regard to statistics – which are also a basis of today’s AI images. The superimposition of images results at the same time in generalized images of an uncanny sameness and in a certain blurriness. Does the fascination of (at least some) AI-generated images result in their relation to a kind of statistical unconscious?
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