Faculty professor’s book documents Latin American Indigenous artists’ critical engagement with generative AI
Artificial Intelligence, Art and Indigeneity: Between Dreams and Hallucinations
A professor at the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures has published a groundbreaking new open-access book that explores the cultural and ethical implications of generative artificial intelligence through the lens of Indigenous visual culture in Latin America.
Artificial Intelligence, Art and Indigeneity: Between Dreams and Hallucinations (University of London Press) represents the first book-length study of generative AI's impact on Indigenous visual culture across the region.
Co-edited by Professor Thea Pitman (Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds’ School of Languages, Cultures and Societies), artist Sandra De Berduccy, and Dr Andreas Rauh (Dublin City University) who undertook his PhD at the School of Media and Communication, the collection challenges dominant Western narratives around digital technology, AI and representation by using a decolonial framework rooted in Indigenous epistemologies.
The publication documents Professor Pitman’s ongoing AIAI research project, launched in 2023, which has brought together Indigenous artists and writers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Peru to experiment directly with commercial image generation tools such as OpenAI’s DALL·E 2 and Midjourney, as well as bespoke software.
Contributors reflect on the dual nature of these technologies, examining their potential for ‘dreaming’ and imagining Indigenous futures, alongside the frustrations caused by AI ‘hallucinations’ that misrepresent or distort traditional Indigenous heritage.
The publication features contributions from six Indigenous artists, writers, and community leaders, as well as Indigenous academic Alex Potiguara, who is currently based at the University of Leeds as a visiting research fellow. Fully open-access and published simultaneously in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, the volume also contains around 100 images illustrating collaborative experiments conducted throughout the initiative.
Structured in three distinct sections - context and theory, creative reflections, and generative critique - the book aims to reframe participatory research methodologies while foregrounding multilingual and multivocal perspectives to resist cultural homogenisation.
Project team members will present their findings at the upcoming Mozilla Festival 2026 in Barcelona at the end of October. A series of dedicated book launches will follow, beginning at University College Dublin on 11 November, followed by an event at the University of Leeds hosted by the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures on 18 November, and concluding at the Universidad Finis Terrae in Santiago, Chile, on 10 December.
Artificial Intelligence, Art and Indigeneity: Between Dreams and Hallucinations is available to read and download via the University of London Press website.
