Sam Dolag: 59.43% │ A road with cones on the side
In 2018, Janelle Shane posted a blog on her website aiweirdness.com, showing how Microsoft’s image recognition AI would consistently detect sheep in empty landscape pictures. Given this lack of understanding about what a sheep is by a seemingly high-tech image recognition software, Shane then suggested that, in a dystopian surveillance state, people should simply dress up as sheep.
Sam Dolag: 66.53% │ A sheep in a field
My photo-series “Surviving the Robot Apocalypse” puts this six-year-old joke to the test: Trying to stay undetected by AI, I photographed myself in different environments holding roughly painted pieces of cardboard in front of me to hide my Human-ness. Afterwards, I used Microsoft’s modern image recognition program Asure AI Vision to identify and describe the contents of these images. Each of the photos was then labeled with the AI's analyses, where the AI’s self-assessed confidence-level is given in percentage.
Sam Dolag: 73.40% │ A road sign next to a road
The aim of this work was to explore what exactly makes people recognizable to an AI, and to find out how its visual perception differs from our human one. While working on the project, it was particularly surprising to see how, sometimes, a single strand of hair or a few fingers were enough for the AI to detect me, while some human viewers didn’t even notice that there’s a person in the pictures.
Sam Dolag: 65.05% │ A bird shaped statue in a grassy field
Sam Dolag, *20.09.2002 in Munich
Currently I am studying to become a secondary school teacher for art and English while additionally studying art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. I work within the fields of photography and film, creative writing and new media. In my work I often focus on a critical approach to internet culture and pop culture as well as contemporary technological changes. My list of publications includes, among others, Neben dir Aufladen (2024, short story, published in “Grenzenlose Aussichten”, ed. Sandra Andrés) and Pieces (2024, short film, screened at the 18th Xposed Queer Film Festival Berlin).