From invisible to visible / As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and that idea is at the heart of this project. The most powerful evidence in history is often visual, and the restricted access and ban on photography at Australia’s offshore detention centres ensures that the outside world sees very little of what goes on in them. While there is power in the first-person accounts of former detainees, understanding their power as prompts for generative AI software is a brilliant creative leap. Seeing is believing, and this innovative approach to creating imagery that brings this witness testimony to life could held change attitudes to the plight of these refugees.
Jennifer Kanis, principal lawyer at Maurice Blackburn who heads up the social justice practice, said: ‘These witness statements and images shine a light on a dark chapter of Australian history. They bear witness to the unimaginable inhumanity experienced by the women, men and children incarcerated over many years. Along with our clients, it's our hope that this collection of witness statements and the associated AI images serve as a permanent record and an urgent case for change to Australians and our government.’
Credible collaboration / When the stakes are this high, the utmost care has to be taken to ensure the final images are as close a representation as possible to what people actually experienced. To safeguard the credibility of the project Howatson+Company worked with photographer Mridula Amin, a three-time winner of the Walkley award for photojournalism. According to Amin, ‘I see this project as being supplementary to journalism, and it has opened an exciting door into new ways of visual storytelling, especially when real photography isn’t possible.’
AI with Purpose / Interest in generative AI has spiked over the last year as powerful new platforms like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney have been made widely accessible. Much of the initial experimentation has been playful and relatively inconsequential, but in this project, the power of this technology is perfectly suited to the difficulty faced by these refugees, helping them overcome a very real barrier to empathy and compassion for their plight.
Gavin Chimes, Executive Creative Director at Howatson+Company told us that rather than drive sign-ups to a petition their goal was to shift attitudes: ‘We aimed to change public perception of refugees and have as many people as possible engage with the humanity of their experiences. A humanity which is often lost in media reporting.’
It’s a brilliant reminder that this technology is not just a toy, while also being sufficiently far ahead of the curve to earn well-deserved attention for both its creativity and utility. And that using AI can help make us more human, not less.
For more on AI image generation and the implications and possibilities for marketers, read our trend report.
