AI Observer

Chantal Flores|Analysis

GenAI art is enlivening the search for Mexico’s disappeared 

Families who’ve lost loved ones to the country’s decades-long Drug War are turning to an unlikely source to reenergize search efforts: ‘Ghiblified’ AI art.

Xintian Tina Wang|Analysis

What does AI understand about fine art?

An experiment with ChatGPT reveals unsettling truths about how AI interprets artists from diverse backgrounds.

Katica Roy|Analysis

Why ethical AI is good business

Responsible algorithms minimize risk and return value at scale.

Sigourney Schultz|Cinema

Dispirited Away: In the wrong hands, ‘Ghiblified’ genAI images erode ethos, empathy, and our very humanity

An art historian who grew up inside Pixar Studios reflects on what we lose when art once rendered through deliberate labor and deep care can be reproduced in seconds — and weaponized just as quickly.

John Maeda|Books

Should we teach AI to reflect human values, emotions, and intentions?

In this new preface to How to Speak Machine, John Maeda revisits a decade of technological transformation, from invisible computing to the rise of generative AI, and what it means to teach machines to speak human.

Lee Moreau|Audio

Design As Humanity

Ellen McGirt|Audio

S11E10: Activism in AI with Google’s Ovetta Sampson

Kevin Bethune|Essays

Oh My, AI

Adobe customers believed that a recent update to the terms of service meant that the company would use their work to train AI models.

Ellen McGirt|Essays

Can AI wrest us from the grip of conspiracy theories?

AI might have the patience, knowledge — and the respect — to help people with deep and wrong convictions change their minds.

Ken Gordon|Books

AI + Designers = ?

AI is a tool, a really powerful one, for designers to use; not an alternative to designers.