Description
In this article I analyze an emerging trend of generative AI videos which represent nation-states as sexy humans and humanoid animals. Drawing from critical IR theories about gender, sexuality, and the performative enactment of the nation-state, I examine how these AI videos (re)produce the nation-state as a coherent and seductive figure in world politics. Most notably, I find that these videos affirm racist and populist representations of ethnically pure nation-states, masking long histories of colonial and xenophobic violence. I argue that this artificial version of the world, coupled with the presumed algorithmic neutrality of generative AI, obscures how human actors make the nation-state system commonsensical with technology, reifying a visual and symbolic system of politics in which alternatives to hegemonic power structures are undesirable and unthinkable. I conclude by questioning whether generative AI has the potential to offer a counter-hegemonic narrative for world politics, proposing a research agenda for thinking critically about artificial intelligence and IR.
