From big data to enunciation in This Person Does Not Exist: the issue of discourse placement

Abstract

The article addresses the enunciation in the imagery of imagetic texts produced with the total or partial incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, focusing on how meaning is produced from the enunciative contracts established in the communication relationship. The theoretical-methodological basis of French discursive semiotics enables the analysis of the effects of meaning generated on the website This Person Does Not Exist, which manifests an imagery turning into text in which human faces are incessantly invented and presented to the user who browses the Internet through the use of AI algorithms. The study examines the articulation between human and machine enunciation actors in the placement in discourse. It was observed that the human actor plays inchoative roles in the procedures of making discourse, since it is the primary source of the organization of the big data and the programming of the matrix algorithm that triggers the automation carried out a posteriori by the machine actor that produces the synthetic images, represented by the GAN algorithm, and articulates different languages for the establishment of the enunciative contract.

Keywords
artificial intelligence; This Person Does Not Exist ; enunciation; semiotics