How does someone without a self create a selfie?

How do you know if words are written by a human or a machine?

Ai-Da asks these questions at the Design Museum, London, from 18th May to 31st August 2021. She’s looking for you to ponder and contemplate on your response.

Self-portrait

The exhibition ‘Ai-Da: Portrait of the Robot’ turns the subject of self-portraiture on its head and questions the nature of human identity and creativity. Ai-Da’s work breaks new ground creating ‘selfies’ of a someone who doesn’t have a self.

In a period where we are creating ‘data doubles’ of ourselves online, though our social media accounts and personal data we give away each time we use the internet, Ai-Da asks us to look at our own digital self-portrait, through the lens of hers.

Font

Ai-Da has devised a font for her words, in collaboration with a human designer, Christian Johnstone. The font is used to show when a non-human is writing and creating sentences. This kind of demarcation is urgently needed as the rise of AI generated text starts to occupy the internet. Being able to tell if a human wrote a sentence or not is a key part of language as we understand it today. Through her font design, Ai-Da brings to your attention that human language is changing - what do you think and feel about these changes?