Body Anxiety in the Age of AI: A Delicate Condition 1

One evening, not so long ago, I prompted “gorgeous queen pregnant enchanted land.” I received four images of young girls (seemingly under age 10), dressed as beautiful queens in magical lands and they were all...pregnant.

I was confused. What was it about my prompt that led the AI to choose for all the images, to make them young girls? I can’t be exactly sure, but I felt instinctively that it revealed something insidious -– that perhaps the collective social hive mind that shapes and forms generative AI data and thought — wanted to see young girls pregnant.

Despite their luscious appearance, the images represent a deep rooted violence in our culture and act as an apt metaphor for the current climate of violence being done against women. The revocation of women’s rights are a pill made easier to swallow when it is presented as a moral good and realized as propaganda in the form of the perfectly aestheticized tradwife.

“A Delicate Condition” are artworks that reflect this cultural rebranding of violence as fantasy and beauty. My hope is that we choose to see reality, even when the fantasy is enticing.