The photographer Tanit Plana recommends a revealing essay on the impact of AI

BarcelonaFor photographer Tanit Plana, technological advances are "very stimulating". She began working with AI a few years ago, always trying to maintain a critical stance. "I am not on the side of the apocalyptic people who think AI will annihilate us, because I don't think that will happen, but I am also not at the other extreme, that of using it without any awareness or responsibility," states Plana. Thanks to books like the one she recommends, "Atlas of AI: Power, politics, and planetary costs of artificial intelligence, by Kate Crawford, published by Ned Ediciones, Plana manages to make her works reveal "the power structures and functioning of AI". "I have no intention of making images that look photographic. The images I create with AI must always show and point towards the violence exerted by the artificial intelligence system itself," says the artist.

An example of this work with AI: Plana has on display, at the Cerralbo Museum in Madrid, until October 25, the exhibition Disfuncionàries, which consists of a series of portraits made with AI. Plana defines this exhibition, which is part of the PhotoEspaña festival, as an "institutional autopsy" with which she wants to make visible the contradictions of the "bodies that embody power". That is to say, a group of people who, despite having "their emotions and their cracks", exercise "control and power" over others. Crawford's research was very useful to her in deepening the relationship between AI and power. "Imagine a boy who goes to trial because he stole a belt in a store. Now he is judged by people who look him in the face and can be empathetic, but what will happen when the state replaces all this with machines and, therefore, with AI? We will have a much bigger problem," he warns.