Depictions of Sustainability and Unsustainability: AI-Generated Images as Part of Our Semiosphere

Evidence shows that humans have been creating images for more than 50,000 years (Oktaviana et al., 2024), since that period, some of the major technological breakthroughs have been writing on clay, the development of paper, the creation of the printing press, photography, video, televisions, broadcasting, computers, the internet, mobile devices with screens, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), all up to images and video created by generative AI. Considering the previous statement, it can be argued that humanity has moved on from a spoken culture in which communication among communities relied mainly on verbal language, going through a stage that mainly used written forms for communicating and storing information. In this sense, humanity is now in a state that has been described as an image-saturated society (Jhally, 1990), a stage in which images are one of the main forms for communicating information, creating meaning, and seeking pleasure (Mirzoeff, 1998) thus, we are now part of a visual culture.
As part of our current global visual culture, images can be considered as texts that disseminate the meanings that hold the system together. In this sense, as Peter Torop states: “Lotman´s perspective enables one to combine the treatment of text as culture and the treatment of culture as text, which at the same time means a possibility to consider these simultaneously as wholes at different levels of the same system” ( Lotman, 2009, forward by Torop, p. xxix). It can be argued that most of the media through which images are portrayed rely on advertising, for example, social media, news, search engines, and more recently streaming platforms, so many of the images can be considered advertisements. The meanings they convey are related to consumption. Thus, key characteristics of our current global culture are the visual (Mirzoeff, 1998; Mitchell, 2002; Sturken & Cartwright, 2018) and hyperconsumption (Bauman, 2007; Lipovetsky, 2007). In this cultural context, and from a semiotics of culture standpoint, AI-generated images can be considered texts that are now part of the global semiospehere.
It can be argued that the data collected and used to train AI can be considered as part of the nucleus of this global semioesphere and so the texts that it generates reaffirm itself. In the words of Massimo Leone: “The advent of sophisticated algorithms has ushered in an era where visual representations are not just mere reflections of reality but are charged with the power to influence, persuade, and even dictate societal norms and values” (Leone, 2024, p.2). As part of a larger study that takes into account the role of AI-generated images as part of the semiosphere a starting point of six images is considered. Based on the previous, this research uses a visual semiotic method to explore the meanings conveyed by AI-generated images when using prompts related to sustainability and unsustainability.