Is AI Destabilizing Reality? Why Artist Trevor Paglen Is Sounding the Alarm

■4th LG Guggenheim Award winner Trevor Paglen visualizes AI’s power structures in photos and videos“Machines now generate images… we must avoid their negative impacts”“Harmful technologies should be addressed by society as a whole”At the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan on the 14th of this month (local time), contemporary artist Trevor Paglen, 52, told reporters that the arrival of generative AI means a human creator no longer needs to stand behind every text or image. He said this shift requires moving beyond efforts to filter out misinformation and instead assuming that some content may have been manipulated, then working to determine what is real. He added that attempting to track developments in the Iran war via social media recently changed his thinking entirely.Paglen pointed out that environments where machines create images for other machines—such as self-driving cars, factory automation systems, and airport facial-recognition systems—are already here. He warned that when machines produce images that humans never see, those images can reshape culture, politics, and society, and he called for public debate to prevent harmful outcomes.Paglen has drawn international attention for work that visually exposes the surveillance architectures and power relations built by AI and digital technologies. His 2022 piece Faces of ImageNet demonstrated how biases learned by AI lead to discriminatory classifications, and his earlier 2019 project ImageNet Roulette invited audiences to experience AI’s skewed judgments firsthand. Organizers cited these projects when naming him this year’s LG(003550) Guggenheim Award winner.The award—a collaboration between LG and the Guggenheim Museum—recognizes artists who expand artistic possibilities through technology. Paglen said, “No one sets out to build harmful technology, but harmful systems do exist. We cannot leave responsibility solely to individual developers; companies, users, and regulators must be part of the conversation.” On receiving the prize, he added, “I hope my work inspires other artists.”Paglen’s honors include a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and the 2018 Nam June Paik Art Center International Prize. He described his practice as research-driven and collaborative across disciplines rather than rooted in traditional painting, and said he hopes that approach can yield social value.At a public talk on the 18th, Paglen emphasized how the meaning of images has shifted in the AI era: “Photographs once carried an indexical link to real events. Now, the ability to determine whether an AI-generated image is genuine matters more. Democratic discourse depends on a shared reality, and AI is destabilizing that shared ground.”