Flat, toxic, … , pornographic? Towards a complex techno-ecology of AI-generated gender images

Since AI image generators became widely accessible to the public, millions of AI-generated images have been produced, circulated, and consumed every day. Their problematic effects – ranging from stereotypical representations of marginalized bodies and non-consensual fake pornography to the resurgence of nostalgic gender imaginaries – have become the subject of intense public and academic debate.
Against this backdrop, the four-year research project, Flat, Toxic, …, Pornographic? Towards a Complex Techno-Ecology of AI-Generated Gender Images, launched on 1 August 2026. Funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) with €440,382, the project is led by Gender Studies scholar Prof. Dr. Ute Kalender and media philosopher Dr. phil. Aljoscha Weskott, together with a student research assistant (N.N.). 

The project aims to epistemically refine current debates on AI-generated gender images by attending to a double movement. On the one hand, AI-generated images do re-naturalize and reactivate existing – and often nostalgic – gender orders. On the other hand, the project approaches AI-generated images as instruments of speculation through which gender, bodies, and their political orders can be imagined otherwise.

This speculative potential, however, is not understood in terms of transhumanist fantasies of progress, transcendence, or overcoming. Instead, the project focuses on the ambivalences, shifts, ruptures, and openings that emerge within contemporary visual techno-ecologies – and on how these might make other forms of gender politics thinkable.

Methodologically, the project works with Situational Analysis (Friese; Marres), a visually, speculatively, and topologically oriented analytical approach that is extended through techno-ecological perspectives (Preciado).

The project’s findings will be published in international academic journals, public-facing publications, and an English-language monograph. They will also inform innovative teaching and workshop formats that bring research on AI-generated imagery into dialogue with broader academic and public debates.

The project is supported by an international academic advisory board comprising Prof. Dr. Ashley Shew, Prof. Dr. Kara Keeling, and Prof. Dr. Louis Chude-Sokei.

More information is available here: https://www.fwf.ac.at/forschungsradar/10.55776/PAT3553825

A dedicated project account will also be launched soon, providing a space to discuss and contextualize emerging visual phenomena from a gender perspective.