Reprogramming Bias: An Art Installation by FemGen AI Lab x AICON

As part of the For Love of the World philosophy, art, and technology festival, the Feminist Generative AI Lab (a Convergence Lab across TU Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam) presented an interactive art collaboration with artist Julia Luteijn and AICON. The annual festival is organised by Studium General Delft and took place on March 29.

Through the interactive installation Reprogramming Bias, visitors encountered Julia Luteijn’s artwork Kilo-girls — a collection of computer-generated poems that reflect programmed gender biases, while paradoxically reminding us of women’s pivotal role in computing. Next, The Feminist Lab provoked attendees to respond to the gendered binaries embedded in our technologies with their own take on these binaries.

Responses varied, but were overall emotionally laden, ranging from hurt and trauma to emphasising the relevance of love and care. Visitors also changed the script, for instance by shifting from binaries to equal expressions (“women are men, men are women”), or just expressing womanhood (“we are women!”).

The visitors’ engagements with the installation points out that many care deeply about how computers represent gender, and that we cannot take current bias in AI for granted, or as something that users should manage by changing their prompts.