Ervik, Andreas2024-06-142024-06-142023https://mediarep.org/handle/doc/23755This paper explores generative AI images as new media through the central questions: What do AI-generated images show, how does image generation (imagenesis) occur, and how might AI influence notions of the imaginary? The questions are approached with theoretical reflections on other forms of image production. AI images are identified here as radically new, distinct from earlier forms of image production as they do not register light or brushstrokes. The images are, however, formed from the stylistic and media technological remains of other forms of image production, from the training material to the act of prompting – the process depends on a connection between images and words. AI image generators take the form of search engines in which users enter prompts to probe into the latent space with its virtual potential. Agency in AI imagenesis is shared between the program, the platform holder, and the users’ prompting. Generative AI is argued here as creating a uniquely social form of images, as the images are formed from training datasets comprised of human created and/ or tagged images as well as shared on social networks. AI image generation is further conceptualized as giving rise to a near-infinite variability, termed a ‘machinic imaginary’. Rather than comparable to an individualized human imagination, this is a social imaginary characterized by the techniques, styles, and fantasies of earlier forms of media production. AI-generative images add themselves to and become an acquisition of the reservoirs of this already existing collective media imaginary. Since the discourse on AI images is so preoccupied with what the technology might become capable of, the AI imaginary would seem to also be filled with dreams of technological progress.engAI-generated imagesimage productionmedia imaginary70010.25969/mediarep/223241614-0885