Published January 18, 2026
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Parrots on a Wet, Black Bough: Facing into AI Art
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Stuart Moulthrop's meditation on AI artistic production explores the pareidolia at play in human interactions with generative models while arguing, via Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World (1991) and Greta Gerwig's Barbie (2023), for a loving approach to humanity's newest tools.
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References
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