April - June 2023
The New York Times issue above is entirely fake.
I printed out a copy and left it on my grandparents' kitchen table, next to an authentic LA Times. They never noticed the imposter.
Speculative design is design for a "what-if" world. What if Virtual Reality became ubiquitous in early education, outdoor recreation, and retail? What if artificial intelligence wrote our news?
Through my final project for VIS 133: Topics in Speculative Design, I was able to engage with the social and environmental implications of a society built around virtual reality and develop my skills in prompt engineering and graphic design.
All text and images were created in collaboration with ChatGPT and Midjourney, the fake advertisements designed with Photoshop, and the formatting done entirely by hand with InDesign.
read the full issue in high definition here
As artificial intelligence becomes ever more relevant, it is critical that artists approach the technology with innovators' attitudes, learning to use the tools to enhance our creative practices rather than avoiding them with fear.
In this new world where human and artificial cognition blend, the news may begin to look very different. I created an issue of The New York Times from 2067 by experimenting with this human-computer collaboration.
How would an AI create images to support each of these headlines?
01: Kids Love New Virtual Shops
02: Youth Rapidly Becoming Virtual Consumers
03: Break free with ImmerseVR
I wanted this newspaper to feel as realistic as possible to modern-day viewers.
I paid extraordinary attention to detail while designing the layout of each page, from the image credits to the page headers.
However, the headlines and article content also had to feel real.
This meant a constant back-and-forth between myself, ChatGPT, and Midjourney, as I input my own ideas into each software and became inspired by the details each artificial intelligence system added while trying to guide the programs out of their more formulaic responses.
Through this intentional, artistic exploration of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and human-computer interaction, I gained new critical understanding of the power and limitations of modern AI tools.