Visual Metaphors for Generative AI

As Getty Images launches its own AI image generator in partnership with NVIDIA, how can brands and the media visualize the concept of generative AI itself? Last year, our Getty Images group of visual content experts, identified the need for more grounded, human-centered visual representations of AI, a departure from the robots and abstract waves of data that have been popular in the past. 

But that was last year. 

In 2023, the exponential progress and availability of generative AI technology has completely shifted the conversation, as generative text and image tools allow us to see this emerging technology at work before our very eyes. The aesthetics created by and in reaction to these tools are still unfolding — the well-known meme of the Pope in a puffy coat, the uncanny Harry Potter x Balenciaga video, and the fake Drake songs are likely just the beginning of a slew of relatively harmless (for now) examples of popular "synthetic media." In the meantime, choosing visuals that represent this new evolution of AI requires a nuanced understanding of current cultural conversations, consumer sentiment, and aesthetics.

Show Human Presence, Control Over AI tools

From international calls to pause AI research to the full-blown work stoppages in the US film and television industries, public opinion about the place of AI in business and in society is decidedly controversial. Our own VisualGPS research shows that from summer 2022 (42%) to summer 2023 (49%), people grew increasingly nervous about AI, as concerns about potential job losses and misinformation ramped up. Even so, most global consumers (82%) are still excited about the possibility that generative AI could help them be more productive, considering the potential of tools that streamline processes such as digital search, virtual assistance, and design.

When choosing visual concepts to represent generative AI, it's important to communicate the idea that these tools are ultimately in our hands — and that we as a society can choose how and why we use them. Especially as new themes, such as creativity, transformation, and autonomy, are introduced into the visual representations of AI in general, consider visualizing a human presence or control within AI concepts. Authentic photography and video showing humans using apps or digital tools works, although this idea can also be expressed metaphorically, by showing a human or analog tool, such as a paintbrush in control of producing or transforming “digital” outputs.

Over the past decade, aesthetics have shifted to follow the course of our tech-enabled lives. Where technology was once seen warily as futuristic, often leaning into a dystopian style of sci-fi visuals, which signaled machines as a sinister all-controlling apparatus. As computing power has been placed in the hands of people across the planet, visuals have grown softer, friendlier, and more hopeful.

A Shifting Color Palette
If we travel back in time, technology-related visuals tended to follow certain conventions — rectilinear shapes, cold blue lights, code appearing as a mysterious language system, and infinite impenetrable server rooms. Influence was certainly derived from popular sci-fi films, from the green-and-black command line stylings of The Matrix (and its antecedents) to the grey-blue hovering visuals from Minority Report.

However, these dystopian views of technology, which emphasize control rooted in white male institutional power, have given way to a new vision that is more feminine (or genderfluid) and less threatening, signified by a change in the use of color. In 2022, visuals related to technology, from gaming to artificial intelligence to the metaverse, started leaning away from the dark and unfriendly blue, green, and black, and toward gentler illuminations in pink and purple.

This color shift has been a long time in the making. References date back to the neo-noir cyberpunk stylings, with their glowing neon accents, as well as the Vaporwave and Synthwave movements, which directly reference the colors and shapes of the ‘80s. Visual artists like James Turrell, known for his immersive and perceptually-challenging light compositions, have influenced major pop musicians (see Drake’s “Hotline Bling” video), and these lighting styles have found their way into more media and branding. The “bisexual lighting” found in Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer videos, Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” episode (arguably the show's least dystopian vision of the future), the colorful stylings of HBO's Gen Z drama Euphoria, and the recent resurgence of Y2K iridescence and rave culture all move away from hard blue light into the possibilities of pastel pink and purple, in all their shiny glory. These colors are somewhere between the real, meaning naturally-occurring, and the other-worldly, bringing to mind an imaginative, dreamlike space of play.

However, even with this color shift in place, most images that brands are using to represent AI in 2023 are still very dark: many show black backgrounds, nighttime settings, or eerie server rooms. These dark visual choices convey to the viewer that there is now more mystery, uncertainty, and unknowns surrounding AI. While this is all technically true, brands that are integrating AI into their business models can consider whether they are doing so responsibly, and, if that is the case, project a more optimistic vision.

When choosing visuals related to generative AI and its new uses, consider moving away from the dark sci-fi blue and green with black background aesthetic and toward bright and fresh tertiary color palettes: think magenta, teal, lime, violet, yellow-orange. This palette, which has become synonymous with emerging technology thanks to various Web3 projects, accurately signals that we are entering a new era of technological development. And while we don't know the outcomes yet, these colors at least suggest that it could be exciting.