105° Nexa Lunch Seminar - Ideal technologies, ideal women: Looking at Redditors’ AI and gender imaginaries of the Replika chatbot

ILIANA DEPOUNTI

(University of Loughborough)

Mercoledì 26 aprile 2023, ore 13.00 – 14.00

Centro Nexa su Internet & Società
Politecnico di Torino, via Boggio 65/a, Torino (1° piano)

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There is extensive literature on how expectations and imaginaries about artificial intelligence (AI) guide media and policy discussions. However, it has not been considered how such imaginaries are activated when users interact with AI technologies. In this presentation, I present findings of a study on how users on a subreddit discussed ‘training’ their Replika bot girlfriend. The discussions featured two discursive themes that focused on the AI imaginary of ideal technology and the gendered imaginary of the ideal bot girlfriend.

Users expected their AI Replikas to both be customizable to serve their needs and to have a human-like or sassy mind of their own and not spit out machine-like answers. Users thus projected dominant notions of male control over technology and women, mixed with AI and postfeminist fantasies of ostensible independence onto the interactional agents and activated similar scripts embedded in the devices. The vicious feedback loop consolidated dominant scripts on gender and technology whilst appearing novel and created by users. While most research on the use of AI is conducted in applied computer science to improve user experience, this article outlines a media and cultural studies lens for a critical understanding of these emerging technologies as they become embedded in communication and meaning-making.

Biografie

Iliana DEPOUNTI is an ESRC PhD researcher in Media and Sociology at the University of Loughborough, UK. Iliana holds a BA in Communication from the American College of Greece, an MA in Digital Media Management from Birkbeck University, London and an MSc in Social Science Research from Loughborough University. Her PhD is about care and companionship with robots and she focuses her research on the AI companion chatbot app Replika. In her PhD she uses science and technology studies, cultural studies and sociology to analyze the interpretative flexibility of technological products. Iliana’s research interests lie in AI, robots, human-machine communication, gender, care and consumer culture.

Follow her on Twitter: @IDepounti
Contact her at: i.depounti@lboro.ac.uk

Letture consigliate e link utili

https://replika.com/
Natale S. (2021), Deceitful Media : Artificial Intelligence and Social Life After the Turing Test, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Saukko P (2018) Digital health: A new medical cosmology? The case of 23andMe online genetic testing platform. Sociology of Health & Illness, 40(8): 312–1326.
Leyda J (2016) Cute twenty-first-century post-fembots. In: Dale JP, Goggin J, Leyda J, et al. (eds) The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness, New York, NY: Routledge, pp.161–184.
Petersen AH (2014) Jennifer Lawrence and the History of Cool Girls, BuzzFeed, 24 February. Available at: LINK
Brahnam S, Karanikas M, Weaver M (2011) (Un)dressing the interface: Exposing the foundational HCI metaphor “computer is woman”. Interacting With Computers, 23(5): 401–412.
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