2022 has been the year of AI image generators. Over the past few years, these machine learning systems have been tweaked and refined, undergoing multiple iterations to find their present popularity with the everyday internet user. These image generators—DALL-E and Midjourney arguably the most prominent—generate imagery from a variety of text prompts, for instance allowing people to create conceptual renditions of architectures of the future, present, and past. But as we exist in a digital landscape filled with human biases—navigating these image generators requires careful reflection.
Midjourney is a particularly interesting Artificial Intelligence tool, proving popular amongst artists and designers alike for its painting-like, imaginative images created from sometimes very minimal text prompts. But the results fed back using this tool also raise complicated questions surrounding image-making and design, questions brought to the forefront when using prompts like "African architecture" to produce images.
