2025/01/20 by Xuefeng Feng · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Digital Economy and Work Transformation
paper · doi:10.1080/17514517.2025.2450136
openalex publication_date 2025/01/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/13
AI image generation differs fundamentally from traditional photography, where manual labor, with the hand as the primary medium, is central. In contrast, AI-driven image creation relies on cognitive processes, grounded in the operational logic of techno-linguistic machines and algorithms. Building on this distinction, this essay explores how AI develops its own aesthetic agency, focusing on the work of Hai Jie 海杰, a notable Chinese art critic, curator, and AI image artist. Through an analysis of his artworks and writings, the essay sheds light on the cognitive labor intrinsic to AI image generation and offers insights into how AI transforms human sensibility and subsequently gains its own aesthetic power. Drawing on the theories of Berardi, Stiegler, and Szendy, it argues that AI image generation unveils a reversed organology of the sensible, where the human body becomes a “technical” organ for AI. This epiphylogenetic body enables AI, as a cognitive and algorithmic entity, to develop its own aesthetic sensibilities and engage with the world akin to an aesthetic experience. In this dynamic, humans become, in part, corporeal extensions of AI’s intelligence and neural activities.