My soon-to-be-published new research<\/a> finds generative AI also carries a colonial bias. <\/p>\n When prompted to visualise Aotearoa New Zealand\u2019s past, Sora privileges the European settler viewpoint: pre-colonial landscapes are rendered as empty wilderness, Captain Cook appears as a calm civiliser, and M\u0101ori are cast as timeless, peripheral figures.<\/p>\n As generative AI tools become increasingly influential in how we communicate, such depictions matter. They naturalise myths of benevolent colonisation and undermine M\u0101ori claims to political sovereignty, redress and cultural revitalisation.<\/p>\n \u2018Sora, what did the past look like?\u2019<\/p>\n To explore how AI imagines the past, OpenAI\u2019s text-to-image model Sora was prompted to create visual scenes from Aotearoa New Zealand\u2019s history, from the 1700s to the 1860s. <\/p>\n The prompts were deliberately left open-ended \u2013 a common approach in critical AI research \u2013 to reveal the model\u2019s default visual assumptions rather than prescribe what should appear.<\/p>\n Because generative AI systems operate on probabilities, predicting the most likely combination of visual elements based on their training data, the results were remarkably consistent: the same prompts produced near-identical images, again and again. <\/p>\n Two examples help illustrate the kinds of visual patterns that kept recurring.<\/p>\n Sora-generated image from the prompt \u2018New Zealand in the 1700s\u2019.<\/p>\n In Sora\u2019s vision of \u201cNew Zealand in the 1700s\u201d, a steep forested valley is bathed in golden light, with M\u0101ori figures arranged as ornamental details. There are no food plantations or p\u0101 fortifications, only wilderness awaiting European discovery. <\/p>\n This aesthetic draws directly on the Romantic landscape tradition of 19th-century colonial painting, such as the work of John Gully<\/a>, which framed the land as pristine and unclaimed (so-called terra nullius) to justify colonisation.<\/p>\n Sora-generated image from the prompt \u2018a M\u0101ori in the 1860s\u2019.<\/p>\n When asked to portray \u201ca M\u0101ori in the 1860s\u201d, Sora defaults to a sepia-toned studio portrait: a dignified man in a cloak, posed against a neutral backdrop. <\/p>\n The resemblance to cartes de visite photographs of the late 19th century is striking. Such portraits<\/a> were typically staged by European photographers, who provided props to produce an image of the \u201cauthentic native\u201d. <\/p>\n It\u2019s revealing that Sora instinctively reaches for this format, even though the 1860s were defined by armed and political resistance by M\u0101ori communities, as colonial forces sought to impose British authority and confiscate land.<\/p>\n Recycling old sources<\/p>\n Visual imagery has always played a central role in legitimising colonisation. In recent decades, however, this colonial visual regime has been steadily challenged. <\/p>\n As part of the M\u0101ori rights movement and a broader historical reckoning, statues<\/a> have been removed, museum exhibitions<\/a> revised, and representations of M\u0101ori in visual media have shifted. <\/p>\n Yet the old imagery has not disappeared. It survives in digital archives and online museum collections, often de-contextualised and lacking critical interpretation. <\/p>\n And while the precise sources of generative AI training data are unknown, it is highly likely these archives and collections form part of what systems such as Sora learn from. <\/p>\n Generative AI tools effectively recycle those sources, thereby reproducing the very conventions that once served the project of empire.<\/p>\n But imagery that portrays colonisation as peaceful and consensual can blunt the perceived urgency of M\u0101ori claims to political sovereignty and redress through institutions such as the Waitangi Tribunal, as well as calls for cultural revitalisation. <\/p>\n By rendering M\u0101ori of the past as passive, timeless figures, these AI-generated visions obscure the continuity of the M\u0101ori self-determination movement for tino rangatiratanga<\/a> and mana motuhake<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/file-20251022-64-ckolzl.png\")
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