ABSTRACT
As AI systems increasingly mediate the production of visual content, AI-generated images are giving rise to novel visual image-worlds, representational practices and visual genres that merit closer analysis from the perspective of visual communication studies. The chapter starts with a definition of visual genres and identifies some emerging genres of AI imagery, including synthetic portraiture, speculative imagery and algorithmic non-fiction. A part of the discussion will focus on the question of whether AI-generated images themselves are to be considered a new genre, create new visual genres or remediate existing ones. The chapter then engages with the representational politics of AI-generated imagery, foregrounding issues of visual and algorithmic biases and how these problematic aspects that have been studied extensively in visual research translate into visual representations produced with AI technologies. These considerations are connected to a discussion of literacy and the limits of literacy, as well as of how visual communication could (and should) contribute to accompanying the ongoing transformations of our visual communication environments.
