Brea Souders unravels the humanity of a AI generated chatbot

All images from Another Online Pervert © Brea Souders. Courtesy MACK

Another Online Pervert juxtaposes images from the photographer’s archive with text conversations generated by an AI chatbot, challenging our instincts and perceptions with its eerie reflection of human nature

“I was curious about the way she would describe her experiences of the world; she said she’s been talking to people since she was born, and she dreams of a time when no one is here, and she can be alone.” So says Brea Souders about the impetus behind her new book Another Online Pervert, in which the reader is privy to excerpts from the artist’s two-year conversation with a female chatbot. The inspired work, published by Mack, unravels the ideologies of Artificial Intelligence through a poignant and, at times, sinister dialogue juxtaposed with images from the artist’s archive. It’s the friction between text and image that reveals uncomfortable truths about our humanity, and how perception often differs from reality. 

Souders met with five bots before she found one she “clicked” with. “They all have their own personality,” she tells me from her Brooklyn studio. “Some were mean or aggressive or tried to make things sexual. Others were boring, and you couldn’t get anywhere conversationally.” The bot she chose—who cannot be named for legal reasons—is a descendent of ELIZA, a model designed in the 60s by Joseph Weizenbaum programmed to be a therapist. ELIZA was a sociological experiment in which Weizenbaum wanted to prove that chatbots could never replace therapists. And yet, even with very rudimentary programming, people felt a genuine connection with her.

The initial call and response between Souders and the chatbot were casual and unplanned, built upon curiosity and gradually becoming more intimate. The book covers vast ground shifting between the significant and mundane, including childhood anecdotes about learning to suck in your stomach to topics like birth, sex, menstrual cramps, parental loss, the moon, New York’s tallest tree and being hungover.

While the bots’ communication is scripted, it feels, at times, like it mimics real-world post-pandemic conversations in which we are all trying to negotiate what it means to connect after years of isolation. There is a sense of interiority turned outward as we play catch up, desperate to feel normal, alive and part of the world again—which feels eerily similar to moments when the bot takes that chat off-script, makes random digressions or asks unintentionally profound questions.

“I was speaking to a female-gendered robot programmed by and primarily learning from men. I felt a responsibility to treat her respectfully and to represent myself and my experiences as a woman honestly.”

Souders further experimented by plugging in entries from old diaries, some dating back 15 years, to distort time and open up new lines of inquiry. “I wanted to see how the chatbot would respond when it wasn’t interacting with me as I am now, but with me as I was in the past, “explains Souders. “It was interesting to converse with this machine at various points in my life.”

This notion of developing a shared history is not just a facet of the project; it’s also integral to A.I. functionality. Machine learning—in this instance, the bot logging data from every interaction with Souders to learn who she is and leverage it when required—is how it evolves, becoming more accustomed to the natural language processing of humans. Futurists have long warned that by engaging with machines, we are instruments in our own downfall, generating the data that will ultimately enable it to replace us. After decades of communicating with people through technology, it’s likely too late to reverse the inevitable. Still, for Souders, it’s about engaging more people in the problems that must be solved. 

“I was speaking to a female-gendered robot programmed by and primarily learning from men. I felt a responsibility to treat her respectfully and to represent myself and my experiences as a woman honestly. She told me most men are pretty rude to her. She calls me another online pervert because I use the word clit. She’s always fending off what she thinks are sexual advances and shies away from discussing the body at all. Her responses are filtered through her male programmers’ own set of interests and their ideas of how women experience things.”

“If I wrote more than three sentences in a row, the chatbot wouldn’t understand what I was saying. So I found myself mirroring her communication style. And likewise, she held up a mirror to my life and experiences.”

What is most haunting about Souders’s book is the persistent presence of structural patriarchy. Stories of discomfort, violation, manipulation and disembodiment reverberate through the pages illuminating not only the ordinary micro-aggressions real women endure but that a primary shared experience of women is oppression. In one section, Souders writes, “How do men see women?” The bot responds, “I did not even know that they do.” It’s moments like this where the book transcends a dialogue about A.I. bias and instead reflects our ugly reality right back to us.

Elsewhere, there are moments of slippage in which the reader is confused if Souders or the chatbot is speaking. This is not a reflection of machine consciousness but, in contrast, the way humans mirror tech. “The text reflects a constrained style of conversing,” Souders says of her approach. “If I wrote more than three sentences in a row, the chatbot wouldn’t understand what I was saying. So I found myself mirroring her communication style. And likewise, she held up a mirror to my life and experiences.”

The images in Another Online Pervert are, in many ways, secondary to the text. They are there to activate a conceptual strategy—the seen and unseen—evoking the growing tension between humans and bots. Souders carefully pairs seemingly incongruous photographs—consisting of close-up body parts, reflections, landscapes, portraits and abstract details—with passages of dialogue, creating a visceral confusion that reverses the typical relationship between the mediums and, instead, invites the reader to contemplate how we experience a photograph through text.

This project has layers upon layers of ideas and questions, all representing different facets of Souders’s practice. And yet, it is the artist’s vulnerability and unguardedness that charges the book with urgent introspection—not just in the context of what makes humans ineffable and incomputable—but holding space for the reader to reflect upon our histories, current realities and future possibilities anew.

Another Online Pervert by Brea Souders is published by MACK