"I Just Don't Want My Work Being Fed Into The AI Blender": Queer Artists on Refusing and Resisting Generative AI

2026-04-15

AI Summary

This study examines the impact of generative artificial intelligence on queer art communities, focusing on the tension between AI systems and the relational nature of queer artistic practice. Drawing on fifteen semi-structured interviews and integrating perspectives from queer theory and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), the research explores how queer artists perceive and resist the encroachment of AI into their creative domains. Findings indicate that participants largely reject generative AI, offering only limited acknowledgment of its aesthetic potential in producing surreal imagery, while strongly emphasizing the need to preserve the relational and political dimensions of their art. The paper critiques the anti-relational logic underpinning generative AI and advances alternative technological imaginaries that support queer world-making, thereby challenging dominant AI paradigms and proposing new directions for inclusive human-AI collaboration.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General Intelligence
• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility
• Computer Vision: Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for Vision

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic ramifications for generative AI infrastructure and applications
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

Art-making is a collective social activity through which queer people engage in political resistance, develop identities, archive queer memory, and form community. However, in recent years, generative AI has disrupted queer artistic communities. Through 15 semi-structured interviews, we examine how queer artists are making sense of the encroachment of GenAI into their art worlds. Our findings surface significant tensions between the relationality of our participants' queer art practices and the perceived anti-relationality of GenAI development and use. We detail how our participants refuse and resist GenAI use and development in response and highlight the limited role our participants saw for GenAI within art-making, such as the queer aesthetic potential of surreal image models. Drawing on queer theory, we discuss how CSCW researchers might support queer artists by refusing dominant AI imaginaries and supporting queer world-building.

Problem

• generative AI
• queer artists
• art-making
• relationality
• resistance

Innovation

• queer theory
• generative AI
• relationality
• artistic resistance
• CSCW