Visualising the unimaginable

Exhibit A-i: The Refugee Account, a collection of photographs featuring asylum seekers detained in Australian offshore processing centres will be showcased as part of the PhotoVogue Festival 2023 in Milan. Now in its eighth year, the festival has previously highlighted captivating photographs that address global social justice issues.

What makes this collection of 130 refugee photographs particularly intriguing is that there are no photographers nor subjects involved. In Australia, coverage of detention centres and detainees is a complicated process as journalists and photographers are restricted from visiting detention centres, and detainees are prohibited from taking photos and videos.

The Exhibit A-i project is the brainchild of Maurice Blackburn, an Australian social justice law firm, which has employed generative AI to bring the testimonies of 32 former detainees to life. This visualisation portrays their experiences in detention centres between 2011 and 2020, generated using information collected during 300 hours of interviews about the conditions and incidents inside the camps.

These photographs were then uploaded to Shutterstock, an online image bank where they are featured alongside traditional photojournalism resources. However, the use of these visual resources is not without consequence. In May of this year, Amnesty International came under fire for sharing AI-generated images on social media to support their reports on the 2021 protests in Colombia. These fabricated photos were later used by digital activists to document human rights abuses committed by Colombian police during the unrest. In a separate instance, a far-right political party in Germany has been using AI-generated images to promote hate against refugees and migrants. In Ireland, a news article on refugees that featured AI-generated images received backlash from the national journalists’ union, who expressed concern over journalists using AI as a substitute for genuine journalism.

With restricted access, the journalistic witnessing and visual documentation of the stories of asylum seekers is a challenge. The debate on whether AI can revolutionise how we present and report news about refugees is just beginning, and projects like Exhibit A-i demonstrate its potential of AI. However, considerable effort will be required to ensure that AI can represent these stories without dehumanising refugees and spreading misinformation based on exaggerated and misinformed descriptions.

Ayesha Jehangir, CMT Postdoctoral Fellow

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