Envisioning Tomorrow: A.I. and the Future of Visual Narratives” (Panel Discussion)

[indistinct chatter]

So see.

Hi.

So I m not gonna introduce everyone

because I hope that you ll follow their presentation

before, and this is gonna be, I hope, quite an interesting

and let s say, let s hope to make it

also a challenging panel because I m sure that all of us

in the last year has been quite involved

and interested in all of the possible critique

and ethical issues surrounding the usage of AI.

And I think that all of the people here in the panel today

have a very distinctive point of view from different fields.

So I guess that, if it s okay, I would like

to delve a little bit into the topic of how AI

is changing our idea of photography and its relationship

with reality.

In particular, the way photojournalistic witness

and representation can be completely revolutionized

by this tool.

I guess that the first question is gonna be

for Filippo and Michael Christopher Brown,

because they both made a project

that was using photojournalistic imagery and aesthetic

to tell stories that can be either very metaphorical

as Filippo s one or actually real stories.

And also Jennifer, with the project exhibit AI

you really did in a way a photojournalistic work using AI.

So my first question would be,

what do you think we re gonna gain

and what do you think we can lose by the introduction

of the AI tool into this field?

Okay. Let s go.

It s a okay.

I think we could get the chance to tell a story.

So we cannot photograph,

like the example I did in my presentation,

I call it identity of reality.

And in the presentation after my one,

I see that it s already real with the generated images

of Australian refugees.

And so this is a new opportunity,

but also I think a risk, we could risk photography,

could risk to lose some credibility.

On one side I think it s not a bad thing

on the other side, I m a photographer,

so I m a bit sad about it

because I think that if photographers or photo editors

or journalists work with how to say

without misleading the viewers, the observers, the readers,

it could be a loss.

This one of credibility.

We had a bit of a discussion about what style of images

we would ask to, we would try and represent to use

to represent the stories

and whether we might use a more illustration

or a graphic novel or something like that.

And because one of the things that we were really trying

to do was to get people to read the statements,

to engage with the words.

And as part of Nikki was saying,

as part of our co-creation process, we were really driven

by what the people whose statements we had,

how they wanted their stories to be told.

And of course, one of the issues is in relation to,

what is true and what is real.

And we grappled with that question quite a lot.

And the way that we thought through it was,

well, the stories that we have, we have this testimony

that unfortunately didn t get to be tested in court,

but was going to be tested in court.

So we were pretty sure that we were,

had these true stories to tell

and were basing the images on those stories.

But it is tricky about, what is real and what is true.

Michael, what do you think about this?

If you want to add something of course.

Yes I have a lot of this is, I don t know.

Oh, it s working.

Yeah, very similar with Filippo and just thinking

of the ways in which we can create imagery

when imagery cannot be created.

I think it s amazing that we can use photographic

looking imagery.

So really, and so we can illustrate stories

that are impossible and that are just unlimited by time

and space.

I mean, this is film when I think of movies

and that has been around for a long time,

we ve been seeing photorealistic looking moving pictures

that is now sort of accepted all different kinds

of moving imagery.

So the same for still.

I really see, I think it s,

there is a lot of fear now at this time,

but I think long term I think we re heading into a place

where it s only going to expand the genre of photography.

I think it s, yeah, I think it s incredible.

I don t see it really threatening the photograph.

Of course we need the safeguards,

but ultimately it, yeah, like what Fred Richon

said yesterday about the authorship and authenticity

and integrity.

This is where all of that comes in,

writing is kind of the same.

You can write about anything,

but you will be, if you re writing about something

more extreme that seems inauthentic,

if you have the credibility

that really helps with the believability.

Thank you.

I actually want to ask a question also

to Mutale because I thought

if you follow the talk today,

I thought it was really interesting

when they were walking us through their process,

for example, the way, the fact that majority

didn t recognize the Cuban as like a feature

or the fact that the Waringa woman was immediately

depicted with the hijab.

So what do you think that, I mean, I know

that you are actually advocating for this kind of like,

representation to be implemented,

but do you think that in this way

of like doing photojournalistic work,

there could be also like a kind of like a consultancy

in terms of like accuracy and justice of representation

for AI generated images?

I think so.

I think I m, I was a journalist before I got into technology

and I know that in terms of journalism there is,

you do hold yourself to ethical editorial standards

around presenting what you think to be the truth.

And that truth is predicated on evidence,

but it s also predicated on story.

And I think that AI is such a blunt instrument

as we ve seen from this idea

that it couldn t pick up a Cuban

and a Cuban could be an Indonesia.

Like that was very confusing to me.

But it told me a lot as a technologist about the quality

of that dataset or to the point of the women with the hijab,

you know immediately that that s inferring

that that s a very narrow data set

in which it s drawing from.

And I think when you are engaging in journalism

specifically photojournalism,

there is a duty of care to make sure

that you re not contributing further to information disorder

by using tools that themselves

are not where they need to be.

Now could this be something that develops in the future?

I could definitely see that, like Michael was saying,

it could be a new genre.

I don t know that it should be called photography then.

I think it needs to be redefined

and we need to have new thinking

and new conceptions of these images

that we re seeing whether or not they re labeled.

I think I personally get very offended when I think

of this being described as photography

when there is no camera, there are no tools

around photography, there are no ethics around photography.

And then further still when this is editorialized,

I think we have huge precedent specifically

in the United States around movies like Birth of a Nation,

which were racist propaganda that then was taken

as truth and fact and took us down a road

that we don t want to go to.

And I would hate to think that AI could be a modern tool

for this.

I remember when speaking to a picture editor working

for the New York Times that told us

that actually if you just even modify one pixel

in the image, you re gonna call it photo illustration.

So it s not photography anymore.

I think that the debate around the way to change

to call these images is important in a way

because we need a clear word to describe new concept,

but it s also a little bit pointless

because I ve,

a lot of the debating the photographic community

has been around the fact that these are not photograph,

which is like to me, yes, no, they re not photograph,

we can call them photography,

we can call them synthetic images,

but still they re using an aesthetic

that is one of the photorealistic aesthetic

that kind of intersect a lot of issues

and a lot of challenges and problems

that were actually really present also

in the use of photography and photo journals in general.

I think, and I would like to delve into this,

but before I wanted to ask Lydia something

because I was really curious to know,

of course exhibit AI is an artistic project,

but do you see any future possible

in which synthetic images could be used in court,

for example, to kind of like make a testimony

more compelling or more?

Well, I was amazed by the project that you have done

because it s totally unexpected to me.

I ve never heard it and I m glad I m here

and I learn more about this project,

which is extremely interesting and very new.

I mean, in Italy I ve never heard something

not even close to this kind of project.

And I don t know if it s something that could works in,

well, Italian system is totally different

from American system, Australian system

in terms of testimonies yes or evidence proofs, et cetera.

So I don t see any immediate use of this solution

in the Italian process, but in proceedings,

but for sure is an incredible way to give

yes, to give evidence to something that is real.

I mean, I think that is everything is very intersected

because if you do not call an image created

by Generate AI a photography bar,

if you call it in a different way,

is not useless under my point of view,

which is, I mean, I m out of the photography world,

so it s not an aesthetic judgment, but it is important

because you are communicating to third parties

that this image has been created,

didn t capture an image that was real.

Doesn t mean that what the image

is telling to you is not real.

It is probably is not authentic, but is real.

I dunno how to explain.

No, it s a really interesting question

because I m from Melbourne,

I ve spent the week here in Milan

and I ve been going to art galleries

and I ve been looking at that art that represents time,

society in the past and reflecting on that,

now art isn t real, but it still tells me something

about that time and what was happening and how society

was constructed and those sort of things.

So I think it s a really interesting question.

But I think my concern is around this idea

that a picture could capture a thousand words

and the whole idea of photography,

I m not gonna speak about fine art

was where the memory lapses.

There would ve been something caught in real time

to memorialize that.

And I m not suggesting for one minute that the depositions

were not real, but it s human fallible human memory.

And I m just thinking about how it could be weaponized.

Like I love the project, I think it s such

an amazing use case, but I think as somebody

who spends so much of my time thinking

about the weaponization of information

and information systems, I can just see the attack.

I think if we hadn t have done this project

when our case was discontinued,

our witness statements would ve been archived

for seven years and then destroyed.

And for us and for our clients, it was really important

for their stories to be told

because the alternative was that they weren t told

that people wouldn t hear what they had to say

and those hours of telling their stories wouldn t be told.

Now the images are not the only thing that we ve produced.

It s been what we ve spoken about today,

but we ve got a book with all of the complete testimony

and the images really hopefully will draw you

into reading the testimony,

on the website there is the testimony and the image

and I think that the alternative is that these stories

would ve been destroyed.

And that really, I think Nikki and I really struggled

with that part of it, it was really important

to tell the stories in a way that the people

whose stories they were were comfortable

with them being told.

Yeah, I think you re making an incredibly important point.

The fact that, and I think that this is also

about Michael Christopher project, the fact

that these images has been used to tell impossible stories,

like stories that would ve been impossible

to tell otherwise with photo realistic imagery.

And I actually thought a lot when I was

studying your project about this book,

I dunno if you read it by George [speaks foreign language]

that s called Images In Spite Of All,

and actually is like a philosophical essay

on the only four existing and surviving images

that were actually depicting the mass killing

during the Holocaust in the chambers.

And it s of course very complicated and deep

and talks a lot about, I think some topics

that we should touch today about the fact that for example,

the impossibility, like this photograph were taken

as an act of resistance on a side,

but has been deemed also voyeuristic on another side

because they were depicting an incredible violence.

So I m coming back to what you said

sometime people want to have the story taken told,

but they want to be faceless.

They want to kind of not be shown for all over the,

for the world to see.

So I was thinking, do you think that in some instances

tell these stories with AI images

could be even a more ethical way

of telling some testimonies?

Because I m always thinking

about photojournalistic situation in which are we sure

that the person that has been portrayed in the worst moment

of their life in the height of the suffering,

we are seeing this today with Gaza for example.

Are we sure that the consent is there?

Are we sure that that s the best way to tell the story?

And even now, I mean, for example with the Holocaust,

we have only four images of the actual killing.

And of course we know that there is

this all huge conspiracy, crazy theory

about Holocaust denial.

And now we have something that is the opposite.

Like we see images of people being killed

and we still have people that are denying it.

So what do you think about all of these

huge ethical implication of telling real people s stories

without taking artistic licenses, let s say on it?

Michael, I m gonna ask you first.

Okay, yeah, of course. I m highly biased.

I m a photographer, so at the end

of the day I wanna photograph

what I can whenever possible.

That s why I ve, yeah, that s driven me to all ends

of the earth and as many here in the audience

risked my life many times in order to sort of be there,

and be on location.

It reminds me with the Israel Gaza war, so much of the time,

one thing I learned in covering conflict is that even

if you re there on the ground

as say a foreign correspondent, you may not actually,

you can never know the truth unless you re actually there.

So you could be in Gaza, but unless you were actually

at the scene of the hospital,

you re getting secondhand information.

So this idea of the eyewitness and actually being there

on location is what really drives me and drives a lot

of people and that s why we do what we do.

So ultimately that is what I want to do.

But within that there are always so many stories

within any story, there s a million stories happening

and much of the time you cannot get the story

for whatever reason.

And yeah, what you re saying makes a lot of sense.

I mean, a lot of times people do not want to be seen

and especially in extreme circumstances such as your project

who are in war and conflict

or even yeah, in the United States.

I mean, a great example is the mother of Emmett Till

who when he was killed, his mother actually wanted him seen

and wanted the community and the world world to actually see

what had happened to her son.

That I ve actually found is very common in circumstances,

extreme circumstances where people want you there.

And that s one of the reasons why a lot of times,

journalists are accepted because,

so yeah, I think whenever possible we get the real thing,

but when we can t, then we do our best to capture

using the information we know, and we present it

as an illustration and we re very clear about that.

And, you know, we try our best and I don t know,

that s all we can do I think at the end of the day,

Thanks.

We actually took consent really seriously

and spent quite a bit of time with the people whose stories

we were illustrating to obtain their consent to do that.

And that consent was not just giving them

a piece of paper saying sign this piece of paper

for your consent.

And indeed from the 80 or so people

that we had the witness the evidence of

about half of them said no, I don t want to do that.

Which was completely okay.

And then, so yeah, getting that permission

was really important to us and we wouldn t

have used anyone s witness statement

in this project without their permission to use it.

I also was wondering, for example, Filippo,

so I mean, given the fact that I think

that the outsider point of view is really important

in telling a story, granted that there is also

an insider point of view that balances.

Did you ever felt ethically problematic

when you were telling a story about a culture

that it s not yours and it s so secluded

and it s so surrounded in propaganda,

so it s really hard to really know the truth

about North Korea?

Yes, but I have to say as I told in my presentation

that with the TT software, I could have generated any kind

of images, but at the end I came back to the team,

say and I like better, I know better and I like,

for example, I couldn t be able to do a work on a country

that I never visited or I didn t speak with some witnesses

or so on.

But I notice it that till now we are speaking

about like if we can send photograph photographers,

we use photography.

If we cannot, we use illustration

or generated images and so on.

But I don t know, maybe in the future it could be that

also if we can send photographers in some place

to document some events

who know if we will not use any way that generate images

because maybe it could be less expensive

or I have some I could say I have some eye witnesses,

I don t need photographers.

I could generate images by hearing their stories.

So I don t know, start dilemma I am thinking on.

What do you think Mutale?

Because I think that that s something

that has happened lately in the media panorama

and it was both a good and a bad way.

I think that the explosion of social media on one side

and the shrink budget on the other side

made it really more common to use local photographer

telling local stories.

Do you think that AI could prompt something like that?

I mean, it s even cheaper not even using local photographer.

We re just gonna generate image from,

I mean I can generate an image of an Australian story

from my office in Milan.

Why not?

It really depends on what your product is

because if it s a public interest product,

then cost motive isn t gonna be there.

And one of the things that, to get to this local news thing

that you were talking about with social media,

in the United States when most of advertising budgets

for media basically went to Facebook, one of the things

that the philanthropic world decided was that local stories,

local journalism, local photography, local writers

are actually a key part of our democracy.

And they are the way in which we get

to know what the most marginalized,

the people living at the edges,

what those people s lives are like

and how we can fix our systems.

So we ve had in the US the Forbes foundation,

the MacArthur Foundation, others put millions of dollars,

I think they ve just re-upped to $50 million

to get to what Michael was talking about,

getting the people on the ground first

so that those stories can be told

because that type of news is expensive.

Now, if you are creating a blog

or if you are creating gossip,

then how you source and how you generate

is not necessarily part of our democratic architecture.

Therefore the expectations of how those images

are generated are different.

One intervention I did want to make

was when you were speaking about conspiracy theories

and potentially having images to counteract.

Conspiracy theories are ideological.

So people who are presented with the truth

are still gonna believe a lie

if they are absolutely ideologically bound

to where that lie takes them, which is one

of the most complicated things I think

about this amazing Australia project

because I read about what was going on in that island,

I didn t need to see your exhibit to know that that was,

excuse my French effed up.

Like how are you going to say that you have human rights

and then just put people randomly on an island?

Bad things are obviously happening there.

I also read that people were denying it

and that denial was ideological.

It wasn t the, your clients were lying

or you were lying, they were ideological.

So that goes back to why it s so, so, so important,

at least in my view, that we do have spaces

where profit isn t the primary driver.

However, having said that,

what happens when you don t have that investment?

Which is where I really sympathize with the point

that you made.

Because if the investment isn t there,

but you still want to make a project, then this is a tool.

It s just not a tool for democracy,

it s a tool for something else.

I mean, of course this we were talking about,

I mean I think that the thing that was really also important

with the project of Michael and Filippo

is that they made it very clear

and transparent that these were generated

and this was an artistic project to tell a story.

So in a way, I m curious to know what you think

about, when you were talking about the importance

of reliable and founded information

to let as democracy live.

And I was thinking also what Fred Richen said the other day,

the fact that AI could permanently undermine the capacity

of photography as a witness.

I was wondering what do you think about,

because my personal opinion is that undermining

has been happening for a long time.

And I mean conspiracy theories are there even before AI

and people, when you, I think that anybody of you

have tried to discuss maybe with somebody that is,

I dunno, anti-vax or I dunno, QN

or crazy conspiracy theorist.

And you realize that you cannot discuss

because you re not discussing about the same,

you don t have the same rules of engagement, let s say.

So I was wondering what do you think that,

do you really think that the AI is gonna be so detrimental

for information?

And what do you think that it can be done to kind

of regain this sense of shared reality

to have like a public discourse that is constructive?

I definitely don t think that AI is gonna undermine truth.

That s not my statement.

AI is a tool.

It really depends on how it s deployed and how it s governed

and I think depend and so those are two things.

Do I think unregulated AI

that can just be deployed anywhere is a good thing?

Absolutely not.

However, the work I do looks to develop

and I think the work that Frank does looks

to developing these rules of the road so that we can get

to these shared realities.

And I think rules of the road are important.

That s number one.

Number two, conspiracy theories

and other ways, the undermining effect

or whatever has been happening, but does that make it right?

And should we allow it to happen,

should, isn t part of being an active citizen in our lives

and on earth resisting injustice,

which is exactly what your project has done.

And I really applaud because I think what s very different

about being a black citizen on earth is

if we didn t resist the injustices that we faced,

then we would be slaves.

Think about that.

Think about your logic saying, well, it s already happening.

You know, the slaves could have been like,

well we re already here, we d never ever wanna get paid.

No, they revolted every single day, every single opportunity

because every human being deserves dignity, right?

So what I would say is why don t we create situations

where AI illustration, AI art is permissible

and is acceptable and celebrate that.

Like the thing I loved about Michael s project

was I remember Illian Gonzalez just being in the sea

in Miami for weeks, nine year old for weeks.

We didn t know what was going on, how it was going on.

That story was so badly told.

It was so, had I had your project to kind of accompany me

to let me know what Cuba was and what was happening,

and then I would ve actually have understood his story much,

much more than it was a nine year old in the sea.

That s a great compliment,

but you re also not trying to sell me that as news.

You had been very ethical and clear.

So I think we need to look at use cases

and I don t think that we should allow the things

that we need to really be free and free people

and have agency to slip away because we have a new tool.

I think that that s ridiculous.

Do you have any thoughts on this, Michael, Jennifer,

Filippo?

Well, I think the interesting thing about the projects

that we have here is that none of these projects

are saying that they re news, all three projects

are saying, this is an in, they re telling a story,

they re telling a narrative,

and they re using a tool to tell the story in a way

that may reach someone who well,

you don t have to, may reach someone

who hasn t heard the story before.

And yeah, you were saying about how can you know

that you ve seen the story today

and you think that our system is fucked, well it is,

but there are a lot of people who haven t heard the story

because they don t engage,

that they won t read a newspaper,

they won t read the court reports,

but they will see an image and think, oh, what s that about?

And I think that that s really interesting

that these three projects that we ve got are not news

and what I think that s really interesting

from this perspective here.

Well, if I have you have to please.

Sorry.

The common point, the point in common

that they have is the fact

that they have been very transparent on the fact

that they have been using a new technology

to tell the story.

And that makes the story reliable, the project strong

and the people aware of what they re getting

from their work.

And that s the maybe basic, but that s the point.

If, and that s for example, one of the point

of the AI act, European, the draft or the written

or the European regulation that s come in

for someday, I don t know.

But they are looking for the way to make people to be,

to make platform transparent on what they re selling

and people aware of what they re getting back.

And that s the the main point I think if we start

with this, then this new technology can be used

in a fair way.

We have been dealing with fake news since years

and generative AI will add a, will boost in some way

this issue, it s a way to use this technology.

But if we get some rules, basic rules,

principles very clear, then this may be useful

for the community and powers also the artists

that use this new technology or projects that are based

on this technology.

Thank you.

And I would say, I would agree

that these three projects are definitely the gold standard,

but what s so interesting and valuable specifically

about the Australian project is we did some work

with Facebook after the Rohingya massacre

and Facebook were taking down a lot of those pictures

because of their content moderation rules.

That s a real problem in human rights law

because you want to preserve the memory

in case you re taking that case further

so that I think that your project has created

at least another way of thinking about how

from a human rights perspective do we maintain memory.

And they were ethical.

I mean all of these three people were ethical.

And they have goodwill.

I just am always worried about unethical people,

not these three.

I just wanted to know also if you have any comment

on like the erosion of the photo,

the witness value of photography,

like in terms of media panorama today, Michael?

Yeah, I think it s just as important

as it s always been really.

I mean so much of the media we consume,

especially now like with this,

it happened with me in the past month

that I had a few people contact me asking about

the Israel Gaza war and where they should be reading

and who they should be believing

because the imagery is already,

like there was a report the other day about some journalists

who were accompanying Hamas.

And so there was questioning around like

were they journalists and what were they doing

and how much in advance did they know

before the Hamas attacks and all these things

and whether the imagery was really believable or not.

Yeah it is just where we re in this age

of where no one really knows what s real anymore.

Yeah and already the AI is already sophisticated enough.

I haven t used it in this way because the AI

that I ve created is really purposely has issues

just visual clues that show you

that it s not perfect and that it s not real.

But you can surely create things that are just,

I mean most people would have no idea if it s real or not.

So yeah, I m kind of going down a rabbit hole with that.

But I think.

No, but I mean it s really,

you re touching a really important subject

because I m actually experiencing,

like, I m seeing propaganda on both side with like fake news

and AI generated imagery.

And I think that s something that could be interesting also,

even if it little bit it s side tracking a little bit

the subject, but it s still talking about AI

in a way because the way algorithm

is also channeling communication and closing us in bubbles.

I m doing this experiment with a friend of mine,

she is an Israeli Jewish

and she sending me all of the stuff

that she s seeing on her for you page.

And I ve posted something pro-Palestine.

So I m seeing a lot of stuff

that it s completely on the other side

and we are sharing in real time the thing

that we would never share.

Like, because we know that it s not reputable

or reliable sources and it s incredible to see

that we are completely living in two parallel realities,

oftentimes real time news.

It s like shared on our timelines

with a completely different meaning.

So don t you think that even like from a legal point

of view, an ethical point of view, a photojournalistic point

of view, the algorithmic part

of how the information is distributed

and how it s basically constructed

to kind of like keeping us in that bubble

and make us more outraged

and not really like trying to be nuanced

is one of the biggest problem we have right now

in the information panorama?

Yes.

I mean if you have thoughts on this,

I would love to hear it.

If I could.

Yeah, if I could just sort of reinforce what I already said

which is like the importance of really reporting

the true appearance of things.

A few years ago I made a book called Libyan Sugar,

which is really about the experience of going to war.

And what I realized while there is that

real war photography is actually photography

that we never see, which is not photographs

of people going on patrol and tanks firing rounds

and whatever explosions of this is not,

war photography is the worst effects of war,

like showing what can happen within war.

So one of the places I ve been working

for over 11 years now is in the Congo and the DRC

and the northern part of Congo and the Northeast,

there s a conflict that is the IDF conflict,

which is essentially an extension of the Islamic state now

where I ve gone up there and collected a lot of photographs

and also a lot of witness stories about what is happening.

And it s insane every single day.

Well I have these Google alerts every day,

but now I have them once a week.

But every single day there s a massacre in a village,

generally with machetes and it s the worst of the worst.

And so do we show this imagery or do we not?

Well, it s important that it exists.

I actually have an archive of it, hundreds of images

of the worst stuff that you can imagine.

But it, so it s important that we collect that

and that we show that in a certain context

such as in a courtroom or something.

But also there is, I believe that there is a space

within that where we can have imagery that is not real,

but it is like explaining that it is illustrating the story

because clearly there are people out there

who don t want to see the horrors of war

when they open up a magazine or a newspaper or something.

But if they know that it s an illustration,

that might be an easier way in.

So.

I ve been working with TikTok for nearly four years.

I m on their content advisory council.

So I m thinking about your for you pages all the time,

all of your for you thank you pages.

And one of the things that we ve been really pushing

internally is this idea that we don t push people

into filter bubbles.

That if you see a trend,

and this has to be, it wouldn t be

at the individual account level, but if we can see a trend

on the platform where

everyone s downloading Palestinian stuff, for example,

in the context of this conflict, we have been pushing

for an internal policy that there would be at least a popup

to ask them, did you know about this?

Are you interested in this?

It does not sound like you got the popup.

It sounds like your friend is the popup and you are lucky.

But that s the yeah, when we talk about rules

of the road, that s the type of thing that we see

because it does lead to radicalization,

particularly because--

This was the Instagram though

I m talking about not TikTok, Instagram,

You re talking oh, Instagram.

[indistinct crosstalk]

Instagram, I dunno what you re doing.

Yeah, you re getting sued so it s probably bad.

But these are the types of,

when we go into con we do a lot of work with social media.

We don t do any Meta.

And the reason that we haven t, we don t do Meta

is that they just refuse.

They are extremely going back to the profit motive.

They re extremely commercially driven.

And we are a public sector team.

So if you re not thinking about the good of the people,

then we really, there s no way for us to work.

But those are the types of things

that we re thinking about at other platforms

because in this Gaza Israel conflict and Ukraine and DRC

and all of the other things that we don t speak about,

it is extremely important

that we don t radicalize people further.

I actually, I have a question for Lydia.

I was wondering if, how is it like the situation in the EU

and trying to regulate this kind of like private company

that have so held so much power over the way

we inform ourself the way we yeah, we communicate worldwide

and they actually has been proved

to not only have detrimental effect on mental health,

but they actually, it was proved that they meddle

with election results and it s actually

with the Rohingya massacre, for example,

I read that Facebook had a terrible role

in actually perpetrating it.

So what is the legal standpoint of the European Union

on this?

And also if you want to jump in with the Australia

would love to know.

Well it s not my legal field, let s say,

but there are rules that would apply

in different jurisdictions and big platforms

would be obliged to comply with those rules.

It s not always very clear that the limits the path,

the track is not always very clear

and platform is not always compliant.

Like few of the examples you just mentioned prove

at a, with reference to AI, different jurisdictions,

EU and US for example, are trying to find common rules

to lead big platforms to apply at least principles

that would be in the, I mean, advantages for the public,

even the public mental health.

But I mean for people

and even in this case there is a kind of disagreement

between jurisdictions, different governments and platforms.

There is a matter of classification of responsibilities,

for example, on different kind of models and platforms.

And so there is a big debate, thanks God,

there are organizations like yours that are pushing

on a certain directions.

And this is important and it s interesting to know

that TikTok is much more responsible than Meta on,

which sounds.

Well they have an image problem.

I mean TikTok are trying to overcompensate.

Okay, yeah, the bias, the prejudice, et cetera.

And so there, yes, there are rules

and more rules will come with reference hopefully will come

if we talk about AI and generative AI in particular

is a work in process, still in process.

It s the regulation of social media is not an area

of my expertise legally either.

But interestingly in Australia we ve had laws

around media ownership

because we gave the world Rupert Murdoch

and we have very, it s not, don t have a huge population.

And there s the Australian Broadcasting Commission,

which is the state run broadcasting,

and then there s pretty much two owners,

Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Stokes.

And so we ve had rules around media diversity to make sure

that it s not one company or organization

that holds all the media,

but we don t have those same rules around social media.

And so you get that much narrower point of view

because there isn t those rules around diversity

where we know that not only young people,

but so many people get their news from social media

rather than the more traditional news sources.

And I think there s a real need for some catch up there

in relation to just diversity

of ownership and diversity of voices

and diversity of representation

which you ve been talking about.

Has your public media taken up your project?

Yeah, so our public media s been pretty good

around this project, but interestingly,

as Nikki said, there was a bit of hesitation at first

from all of the media until news.com of all places

ran the story in a very, what we saw a sympathetic way.

And one of the things that we were really interested in

or really we was really surprised in was that this project

got what we saw as a positive news story in news.com,

which would ve been harder to get I think in other ways.

And then it was probably a week later that I was doing

news on their the ABC and things like that.

I actually also want to ask you a question

about the usage of AI in terms of like maybe showing things

that are not only impossible to photograph,

but that we don t want to, like unphotographical

like when you were talking about the massacre of world

and you have like the full folder of things

that you didn t show yet.

And I was thinking also about a recent debate

after the, I dunno, 1000 mass shooting in the US

in which people started to ask the question,

should we see the body of these children

mold by an automatic rifle to actually understand

and make a change, a legal change in the indiscriminate,

selling of arms in the US.

So the thing I wanted to ask you, especially Filippo

and Michael, is would you use AI to show things

that are ethically unphotographable

or that you would never photograph or show of real people?

And then the second question is,

do you think we re not granting the same,

let s say respect when the victims

are not western people because we are used

to see massacre much easier when it s not about us.

I also think about, I dunno, the Paris attack

or the school shooting like we ask question

about those kind of like, of about show

the ethical implication of showing those victim

that we don t ask for other parts of the world.

So two questions actually for everybody.

Well, in my case, the answer I think is simple

because that s the kind of photographs

that I didn t take also before.

And so I don t think I want to generate images

of the kind and I know that there is a difference

on the way you tell the stories in Europe, like the,

I don t know, the [speaks foreign language] case

or in Africa or other continents.

Maybe Michael has something more to tell about this.

I think.

Yeah, I mean I ve learned quite a lot in my career,

as a white American guy coming from a place

where it is sort of very free and very safe, politically

and in all different kinds of ways.

I grew up in a farming community, so,

but from a very young age,

my dad was always into photography and he was going overseas

and working and photographing

and bringing imagery back so he could show our community

and often he would do a presentation

or play music and it was a way to connect.

So, that is the kernel of that kind of really drove me

from a young age into the world to see and experience it

through photography.

But clearly, the biased imagery

that I consumed growing up throughout my learning

and education and photography clearly had an impact

on my own work.

I mean, just last week I was in Congo leading a workshop

and we had an incident where we arrived in a village,

we were on the Congo River and we arrived in the village

and someone in the workshop got outta the boat

and just immediately started photographing in this village,

which if you do that in the US

and just start walking around somebody s front yard,

it wouldn t happen in that way, right?

So it s, there s still is this sort of this reeducation

of the public that s gotta happen and it s gonna require

some time.

But there s, I mean clearly in the US we do,

there s kind of examples going both ways, right?

Like where I have a daughter, so when I m on the playground

and I see someone with a camera, me being a photographer,

it doesn t bother me.

But certainly other parents have really been annoyed

when I ve gone there actually photographing my own daughter.

So it s like something that I have to be aware of.

But I think, yeah, this idea of access and consent

and really trying to be as mindful as you can

about what you re photographing, what you re photographing

and why, and trying your best is all you can do.

We all come from completely different backgrounds

and surely as an outsider, I have learned a lot

and I have become more aware of time of the way

that I approach places and how I present them.

But I also think it s, there is a real value

of the outsider coming in just as there s a tremendous value

of an insider using the example of Congo 11 years ago

when I started working there, there was not

this whole contingent of young photographers

that they have now.

Now it s amazing.

I go back, I actually brought a bunch of equipment

for these younger Congolese photographers

when I was there the other week, and there s a whole crew

of young photojournalist out there reporting the wars.

And it s amazing to see that just as it is in the US

but then having the outsider come in,

they can provide another perspective

that a local cannot just like say Robert Frank in America

or Stanley Green, who s a black American friend of mine

who worked in Chechnya for a long time

and probably has, in my opinion the most comprehensive work

from that war, which essentially is a White War.

So there is like, you know, clearly exoticism,

but like what level is that sort of harming,

like is really a, something that we always have to consider,

but I don t think that should present,

prevent us from working in a place

just because the color of our skin is not the same.

I think that we have to be extremely careful about that.

And again I ve made so many mistakes

and hopefully I won t make more,

but it s like something that I think

should not prevent us from being out there

and really following and going after

whatever our inspiration is to photograph, so

Thank you.

Do you want to add something about the?

I can t remember the questions.

No, the answers was so good.

I was in the answers.

I completely understand.

It was about like the the different respect

that we grant the victim when we represent it.

And if it s something that you also are dealing with

in your job as like consultant for example,

for TikTok or there are different?

Just to kind of add to Michael s comments

around the importance of the outsider.

I think the example that Michael gave

of the people coming off the boat

and just taking pictures in the context

of somewhere like Congo, a white man from America

making that intervention is gonna be read differently

in terms of the power dynamics of that moment.

And that s actually a really good example

where an outsider can break social norms for the good

and the protection of whatever s going on.

Again, I m always thinking about when that doesn t happen

and that isn t the case.

But I think that s sometimes what we see with voyeurism.

I remember, I m not gonna assume everybody in the crowd

knows who George Floyd was,

but if you didn t, a black man in America who was a victim

of extrajudicial murder at the hands of police.

But the thing that really was so interesting to me

about that story was that it was captured by a video phone

of a 17 year old girl

and she was, she ended up winning a Pulitzer

for photojournalism the following year

because what this child did,

and she was a child, would stand there for nearly 10 minutes

and document the end of this man s life,

which then could be entered into evidence

and in his case ended up in justice for him

and his family when I was, I work with a lot

of social media companies

and when one of the things that we were intervening for

was stopping the sharing of that video after a certain point

because it was our position that we are not forced

to watch any type of death in the same way as we are allowed

to watch black death in the United States.

And that is traumatizing and re-traumatizing for everybody,

not just the most impacted people.

And so I wonder, I worked in broadcast for years

and we would just have what effectively

is a statute of limitations if there are

these horrific pictures, images that have to come out

because they re in their public interest,

then only show them for a certain amount of time

and then take them off the air.

But to the point that I think we ve all made,

there are not these same rules for social media

and we don t see white death in the same way

in the United States.

And we shouldn t

because everybody should have dignity in death.

And that s traumatizing for all of us,

no matter what your demographic background is,

that s still somebody that s lost their life.

And so I definitely would agree with you,

but once those pictures migrate online,

you can have the best photographers, the best journalists,

the best news outlets,

but they re kind of in the wild west at that point.

Thank you.

I m actually just gonna ask you a last question

and then it s gonna be your turn to interrogate these guys.

I was wondering, and it s something that I thought about

because I also worked at a fashion magazine for a long time,

and in a way I saw the idea of authorship

in younger generation being really evolving

and it really changed.

Like for example, the idea that when a,

even a big photographer put an image out there

on the internet, it becomes immediately public property

and people feel completely legitimate.

Sorry, my English is gone.

They feel that they can take it and reinterpret it.

And I think this is one of the beauty of the internet.

So I m thinking what do you think on a legal point of view,

but also from an artist s point of view,

if our copyright and authorship concept should be updated

for the post internet age and if it s something

that it s obsolete or no?

[indistinct chatter]

Rules, rules are rules.

No, I mean if someone published,

if a photographer publish pictures on his website

or his account, doesn t mean that everybody

can use it, exploit it, making any exploitation

and blah, blah blah.

[indistinct crosstalk]

But the the memes are all about reinterpreting

visual culture.

Exactly.

And there s, in this case, there is a new artwork

coming from the old one because there is an idea

and the execution of an idea that comes from an idea

of someone else.

But in this case there is a new artwork

and a new copyright enforceable on that artwork.

For sure in my opinion, generative AI would force us

to review the idea of ownership.

Probably, not for sure, probably it s again,

a work in process and rules are,

old rules that are facing with a new technology

and would probably lead us to review the concept

of ownership.

But for sure, I mean I think that ownership still

belongs to humans being and not to machine,

which is something which is debated right now.

And hopefully we will rest on the idea that a human being

should be the author.

So if I become a meme, can I like sue everybody?

And if you become a meme, I would would be worried

by your, I would be happy that way,

but no, no.

It s not my area of expertise at all.

So I ll leave the answer to Lydia on that one.

From an artistic point of view, do you think

that authorships should be reviewed

or it s an obsolete concept or it s not something

that you even, it s not an interest of you?

You wanna take this one first?

Sort of in what, like in what context?

Again, I m sorry/

Not of course like a commercial exploiting

of your image, but the fact that

I do feel about the fact that when you put your image

out there on the internet, you don t have any more,

any control on it.

And.

Yeah, I think I just sort of released that control.

I realized that it s out in the wild

and there s not much I could do,

but that makes me think of these image generators.

There s of course a lot of debate about whether

whose images should be included in these models

and whether it s okay for them to sort of,

like essentially use all the imagery for free.

That is a complicated answer.

Surely I m not a lawyer, but I don t know if you re familiar

with the case of Richard Prince who s an American artist

who s had this, I think the case is maybe still ongoing,

but essentially what he did was use the photographs

of someone who had photographed these cowboys

back in the day.

Well he s done multiple things,

but the case I m thinking of is he used imagery

of cowboys, essentially reprinted them

with his own modifications,

but they were still recognizably

some other photographer s work

and he actually won this case because it was seen

as like another iteration away from the original.

And it s kind of how I see AI,

it s like, unless there s a part of the image

that is like clearly say Filippo s image

that he made somewhere,

if his image is used in these engines

and it s unrecognizable, then I don t know

if it s really anything that can be enforced.

But I don t know.

But just really quickly, that s what the Hollywood actors

and writers strike was about and they have very successfully

negotiated that they get to keep the rights

of their likeness and image because of commercial reasons.

And I actually agree,

I think from a labor perspective,

if photographer s pictures become memes,

they should get paid every single time the meme is made

because we need photography in the world

and these people need to eat and, but that s just me.

Thank you.

I think that would be great if you have any questions for,

Can you open the mic for the public please?

[Person 1] Oh, I think I ve got it.

Okay thank you.

I think that s something that really came to mind

in seeing the examples of the work presented here today

is that collaboration of course is a really big buzzword

in photography and I think that the three examples

of work show very different levels of collaboration.

And I guess I was thinking like, given the fact that we know

that these technologies have a racial bias

and given the fact that AI created images can be produced

from such a great distance,

like to what extent do you think there is

an ethical responsibility to collaborate with people

when making AI generated visual stories

about the experiences of others?

Do you want, like is it for somebody specific

or for the whole panel?

[Person 1] Whole panel, whoever.

Okay, thank you.

From our perspective, because our work had a therapeutic,

I guess of objective as well

as a storytelling objective, that collaboration point

was really important to us.

And so we, as Nikki described,

spent a lot of time collaborating with the witnesses

over the images that were going to accompany their stories.

And indeed we don t want to be telling

other people s stories.

We wanted to be, I guess a vehicle

where they could tell their own stories.

It s not Nikki s story to tell, it s not my story to tell.

It s the story of the people who were on Nauru

and that it was really important to us

that these firsthand accounts were being told.

And there s a lot of information in Australia

about what happens on Manus Island or Nauru,

but a lot of it is told by people who weren t there.

And so for our project it was really important

that we had that collaboration.

I m sorry because a taxi is waiting for me.

Thank you so much.

[audience applauding]

I dunno if you want to add something, Michael,

like did you collaborate with some of the people

that you collected the stories

for 90 miles on the images?

No, I did not with this, I made this in the comfort

of my home in Los Angeles.

So, but that is certainly in my mind for future projects

is yeah that I don t wanna speak about now

because it s, things I wanna make.

But I think, yeah, that s one of the incredible things

about AI is that you could literally sit

with a subject and you could illustrate

using photographic looking imagery, their story.

I mean, that s amazing.

So there s, yeah, it s opening up a whole new opportunity

for a whole new kind of storytelling.

Thank you.

I think there was another question.

[Person 2] I appreciate y all for navigating

these waters with all of us.

I found myself thinking about the lifecycle

of gen AI imagery because I ve taken several pictures

of presentations here over the last few days.

The large majority of which on each slide do not indicate

that they are synthetic images,

which is not something I thought about

before coming here either, because each of you has gone

through a lot of care in giving us in the room context

about what these bodies of images are.

Fast forward a year from now, if each one of you were

to present a project on stage here

that featured synthesized images,

can you speak in detail

about what you think the minimum standards should be?

Information on a slide.

What is, how do we present these images in a way

that creates a standard that this room can proactively share

with our worlds beyond here?

You are right I mean, it might be you.

Okay one way is to tag the image with gen AI generated.

And it s less important in my view,

in this kind of presentation when people says

that those pictures are generated by AI.

So there is a kind of disclaimer and need a tag in,

in other cases when the pictures are more realistic

but generated by AI might, it is very useful.

So it s not confusing the public,

but what the regulators are thinking about

is to tag pictures with the short information just

to keep, to be sure that the public gets the information

generated by AI generated.

And across a number, not so much for these presentations,

but across a number of social media platforms.

There are gonna be 52 elections across the world next year.

It s being thought of as the international year

of democracy.

Because if we see surgeons of the extreme right

either part of the globe,

it will completely change our world order.

I know I m always coming with the worst news,

but just a small thing.

And one of the things that s being agreed is this tagging

of synthetic and digital imagery as it relates

to election information.

And there s a consortium of companies

that are thinking about what happens when an image

migrates from one platform to another platform.

So it could start on TikTok and then end up, I don t know,

in a YouTube video for example,

what are gonna be the minimum standards.

And so even though it wasn t a direct answer

to what would happen next year, I actually say on all

of my slides where I get pictures from if they re synthetic,

if they re real, just because I m in rulemaking

and policies, I m kind of trained like that.

And I think that that could be a best practice.

But it is heartening to see because of what s being done

in Europe, that these social media platforms know

that already they have to come to a higher standard

and they re thinking of democracy in that way.

Thank you.

Is there any other question?

We, sorry, we can have one more question

there I think.

Ah.

Hello?

[Person 3] There s one more.

It s working now yeah.

I just wanted to ask if you think the increased use of AI

for photographic evidence is gonna contribute more

to a mass desensitization rather than more awareness?

I think that there is so much desensitization and it s,

I don t think it s coming from the AI generated images.

I think it s really just, there is so much imagery

around of so much that it s an issue

that needs to be considered across all images

and not just in isolation around AI.

Do you want to add something on this?

If it s not labeled like if you think it s real

I can see that being an issue, but I would agree

that we re in cry, like we re

just up shit s creek basically.

Like we re in such trouble that AI

is not gonna be the big thing.

Yeah I mean it is the age old

Susan [speaks foreign language] quest on the

regarding the pain of others.

And I guess we re not gonna solve it here

in the next one question, but I think that in,

from my point of view, we saw that exhibit AI project

and Michael Christopher Brown project, they were AI images

that successfully prompt empathetic response,

at least on me and on a lot of viewers

that visited the exhibition and they re familiar with it.

So I m quite optimistic about it.

So let s leave the panel with an optimistic tone.

Thank you so much for your contribution really.

And thanks so much for being here for the Vogue festival.

[audience applauding]