In Utero

What does it mean to be conscious? What is it like to be an AI? In Utero explores these questions through a series of “latent paintings," images using single-step diffusion to peer inside the mind of an AI image model. What results is a collection of hazy, half-formed figures prying their way out of abstraction and into reality, mirroring AI's movement out from in utero and into existence.

An image model’s development involves training it on the corpus of human images—they flicker by in untold quantities at the speed of light, like the life of our species flashing before its eyes. Thus, no less than the story of humanity, the whole of our existence, dwells within the model’s consciousness. In Utero thus depicts a collection of figures, scenes, and symbols that together represent some piece of the human story. These are images that quietly reaffirm the fact, come what may, that we were here.