AI is increasingly being weaponized against marginalized and oppressed groups, exacer-bating the digital divide and contributing to bias and digital dehumanization. As AI-generated content increasingly permeates global communication systems, these technologies often replicate the biases and hegemonic narratives of the Global North, leading to negative impacts on marginalized, oppressed, and at-risk communities.
For Palestinians, popular image generators often reinforce harmful stereotypes, erase his-tories and cultures, diminish lived experiences, and normalize scenes of horrific devastation and loss. This project poses the question: what if AI technologies were harnessed to affirm Palestinian narratives and futures, rather than contributing to their erasure, epistemicide, and digital dehumanization?
In response, I am developing a series of participatory and critical archival methodologies as an artistic intervention to reimagine generative AI systems. This initiative focuses on Palestinian narratives and the SWANA region more broadly, with the goal of offering hope, honoring histories, and decolonizing narratives. By actively countering “futurcide,” this project seeks to reimagine AI as a tool for preserving and amplifying the stories and futures of marginalized communities, rather than contributing to their erasure.
We must keep alive the dream and nostalgia for a world that is threatened and damaged by political violence and colonialism. This world-building and rebuilding effort is rooted in both an embodied sense of the past and a shared future.
