SEMINAR / DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION AND DESIGN
Title: “AI & Media Futures”
Speaker: Ali E. Erol, Ph.D. (Visiting Professor, Communication, Boston College)
Date: Nov. 3, 2026
Time: 12:30-13:30
Location: FFB-011
Abstract:
Everyday consumers might see Generative AI (GenAI) as a harmless interactive media
technology that can generate texts, images, and videos, used to enhance gaming technologies and keep people company with chatbots, grief-tech, and AI partners. On the other hand, GenAI is developed and used as a weapon, powering mass surveillance, engaging in automated killchain operations, and fueling predictive “pattern-of-life” analytics platforms. In my research, I argue that the banal, affective appeal of consumer GenAI and its weaponized deployment by the state are mutually constitutive. As an example, I examine how US homeland security agencies (DHS/ICE) use GenAI media to generate promotional imagery, recruiting personnel into an AI designed mass surveillance, population control, and “affective enforcement” apparatus. I contextualize this case study within my broader project on AI and media, which theorizes GenAI as a control value technology—a technology subsidized by the state for its capacity for governmentality, despite commercial underperformance. By integrating analyses of the political economy of media, self-representation of GenAI companies, and visual analyses of security
apparatuses that rely on AI, this research offers a critical framework for understanding how
GenAI manufactures compliance and powers the modern security state.