Typical American: A Point of View

The prompt is open-ended and subjective, and in previous examples of prompts with similar traits, the results always seemed random. So why then is the prompt ‘photograph of a typical American’ returning results with such a clear point of view? No matter how many times I have run the prompt or how many generations I have created, the point of view remains. I do not curate the AI, I upscale every option, no matter how bad or absurd (as the following galleries demonstrate). The artificial intelligence has a clear bias about the term ‘American’ in particular, offering up a carnival-like version of Americana with the habitants looking forlorn, sometimes apathetic. The amount of food, cars, and just stuff is impossible to ignore, as is the clear tendency for the generations to feature middle-aged white males or young attractive white females who could pass for fashion models. This selection of images, taken from over 2,500 options represents the clear point of view this particular prompt continues to return.

Illustrations by Midjourney AI

Appeared in Southwest Contemporary, October 2023