The Emergence of Artificial Imaginaries

Over the past months I became increasingly interested in the role of artificial intelligences as possibility-producing actors. This interest follows the assumption that artificial intelligences can produce novel possibilities, but always do this within existing imaginary structures that persist across human and non-human entities. To describe and discuss this extended dimension of artificial imagination, a new term might be useful: artificial imaginaries. In sociological discourses imaginaries are often considered as systems of how people imagine their social coexistence. They consist of shared beliefs, ideas, narratives and values, and make collective practices possible. When we use our imagination to create novel possibilities we mostly operate within such imaginaries what makes certain development directions imaginable and others not. The concept of imaginaries mostly relates to humans and their shared cognitive space. From an extended mind perspective it can be argued that imaginaries were always not just related to humans but distributed across environments, objects and tools. Artificial intelligences are relatively new actors that through the development of generative capabilities started to actively contribute to the evolution of imaginary structures. In that sense are artificial imaginaries the emergent property of imaginations produced by artificial intelligences that have spread through the interactions between actors and now dominantly organize human coexistence. Artificial imaginaries are a social creation but the intervening imagination that enables them does not emerge from humans anymore. I think that the more people delegate their imagination practices to artificial intelligences the more probable the emergence of artificial imaginaries becomes.

Sep 5, 2025