Critical decolonial scholars Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias, have coined the term ‘data colonialism‘ to describe the process by which Big Tech grabs all sorts of personal information, including ‘affective’ data like reactions to friends’ posts and socially shared pictures and captions, to use it without consent to train and implement technologies that can track movements, profile biometrics, and discriminate against minorities and disadvantaged groups. 

However, while the inner mechanism through which a new form of digital colonialism is reactivated by data-powered technologies has been largely unveiled and denounced, the strategies for counteracting it remain less clear. 

What does ‘decolonizing AI’ mean in concrete terms?

I posed this question to Ameera Kawash, a Palestinian-Iraqi-American artist and researcher whose interdisciplinary projects powerfully situate her artistic practice within critical AI studies, exposing and challenging discriminatory and repressive instances in today’s tech sector. Ameera’s recent works include Rescripting Data Bodies: Black Body Radiation, a collaboration with Ghanaian-American artist Ama BE that rethinks the relationship between data and embodiment through data-driven performances inspired by West African masquerade traditions; and Future Archives, an archival and artistic intervention focusing on the impact of generative AI on Palestinian lives and narratives.

What does decolonizing AI really mean? What does it entail, and how can we implement it as a practice in real-world terms?

Decolonizing AI is a multilayered endeavor, requiring a reaction against the philosophy of ‘universal computing’—an approach that is broad, universalistic, and often overrides the local. We must counteract this with varied and localized approaches, focusing on labor, ecological impact, bodies and embodiment, feminist frameworks of consent, and the inherent violence of the digital divide. This holistic thinking should connect the military use of AI-powered technologies with their seemingly innocent, everyday applications in apps and platforms. By exploring and unveiling the inner bond between these uses, we can understand how the normalization of day-to-day AI applications sometimes legitimizes more extreme and military employment of these technologies.

There are normalized paths and routine ways to violence embedded in the very infrastructure of AI, such as the way prompts (text inputs, N.d.R.) are rendered into actual imagery. This process can contribute to dehumanizing people, making them legitimate targets by rendering them invisible. 

Take Palestine as an example: when I experimented with simple prompts like “Palestinian child in a city” or “Palestinian woman walking”, the AI-generated imagery often depicted scenarios that normalize violence against Palestinians. The child is shown running from a collapsing building, with utter urban devastation in the background. Destruction is ubiquitous, yet the perpetrator of this violence, Israel, is never visually held accountable. These AI-generated images contribute to shaping a default narrative where, without context or reason, Palestinians are portrayed as living in perpetual devastation. This kind of imagery perpetuates a biased and harmful narrative, further entrenching the normalization of violence against them as a result of more dehumanization.

What I call the ‘futuricide’ of the Palestinian people stems from a complex interplay between how data is trained—by scraping the Internet on a large scale and absorbing all the existing stereotypical representations circulating on the web—and then generalizing this data, making it sort of ‘universal.’ As AI generates patterns and models, it crystallizes categories. The Palestinian city resulting from my prompts risks becoming ‘the’ Palestinian city—a quintessential, solidified entity where suffering is turned into a purely visual item that gets infinitized and commodified through generative AI in all its forms and aspects. These traumatic aftereffects occur without a visible perpetrator, resulting in an occupation without an occupier. It mirrors a horror film: pure devastation without cause or reason, just senseless violence and trauma.

If we were to dismantle the colonial foundations embedded in the creation and default structure of AI as conceived today, where should we start?

I believe we should start from very small, local instances. For example, I am working to involve real-world cultural institutions in the creation of datasets, thereby developing highly curated and customized models to train AI without scraping the internet. This approach helps resist the exploitation that typically underpins the making and training of these technologies, which is also where most biases are introduced. 

Decolonizing AI means eliminating this exploitative aspect and turning towards more curated, artisanal labor and practices of care.

Of course, this approach is not scalable, and perhaps that is part of the problem. Conceiving the digital as quintessentially scalable makes it colonial, commercial, and commodified by default. It might be that decolonizing AI, as a project, is inherently unworkable—machine learning, in its current structure and conception, offers little room to decolonial practices.

However, by collaborating with real-world institutions such as universities and cultural centers to create training datasets, we can address at least one layer of the problem: data collection. There are many layers involved in making AI work, all of which should be considered when attempting to ‘decolonize’ it. 

Starting with data collection is a meaningful first step, but we need to acknowledge that a comprehensive approach will require addressing each layer of the process. For example, even if the information is collected fairly, curated meticulously, and consent is given, the training model might be exploitative in itself. The act of turning data into labels and categories and universalizing them is inherently problematic and very much part of the colonial legacy. It can perpetuate biases and reinforce harmful structures, regardless of the fairness of the initial data collection.

All these question marks should be addressed critically with a holistic approach. For me, it would be useful to think about AI within the framework of critical archival practices. It is very rare to situate AI within archival practices, as we do not typically see data as an archive. Yet, it is. Data is a precious resource from the past upon which future knowledge is built. Understanding AI as an extension of archival practice allows us to critically assess how we collect, categorize, and utilize data, ensuring that we approach it with the same care, consent, and contextual awareness that we would with any other archival material. Furthermore, thinking of AI as an archive reveals that there is always a selection criteria and an organizing principle driven by choice.

To create a decolonial or anticolonial archive, we must adopt feminist perspectives of consent and care and include other forms of knowledge beyond the traditional, language-based ones. As an artist, this is integral to my daily practice—I engage with non-traditional forms of knowing and learning that are embodied and ephemeral, thus less likely to be datafied and commodified. By embracing these alternative forms of knowledge, perhaps we can resist the commodification and universalization inherent in traditional AI systems. And yet, if we were to truly decolonize AI, would it remain the same object, or would it be something entirely different?

What about the role of generative AI in spreading awareness about the genocide in Gaza? Why did the ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ synthetic picture go viral, while so many evidence-based images offering proof of the massacre have faded from public attention?

Many elements contributed to the virality of the AI-generated image ‘All Eyes on Rafah.’ Firstly, the readable text embedded within the image allowed it to bypass contemporary platform censorship, facilitating exponential sharing. Secondly, people likely perceived it as a ‘safe’ image—it is sanitized and free from explicit violence, making it more palatable for widespread dissemination. 

The visuals inhabit a safe space, which is the space of AI, not Palestine. Removing the specific context creates a comfortable distance for viewers. From a Palestinian perspective, this is highly problematic as it contributes to the colonial process of dehumanizing and erasing the local population. Palestinians are redacted from the image, as if their lived experiences are not credible or do not count at all.

The messaging is also problematic: “All Eyes on Rafah”—what does it really mean? It doesn’t suggest actions or call personal agency into question. It doesn’t urge you to protest, contact your MP, or demand sanctions on Israel. It doesn’t push you to do anything concrete; it’s very passive. The whole world is looking, witnessing genocide in real-time, which might be a more sophisticated form of clicktivism. Doing the absolute minimum—just sharing an image—gives a false sense of having contributed, of having ‘done something.’

Of course, the positive aspect is that 50 million people have shared it across platforms. However, Palestinians do not want to go viral and be invisible at the same time. We need virality to work for us, to bring an end to the violence.

What would happen if these AI-powered technologies were used to affirm Palestinian futures instead of contributing to their annihilation? This question guides my practice. Technology is integral to the discourse on the future, and we Palestinians need to be part of the future. We must be involved in shaping it, not cut out from it.

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The Gospel, or Habsora in Hebrew, is the latest tech gadget deployed by the IDF to wage war on Gaza. Building on available data, this AI identifies potential targets within the Strip and calculates the civilian casualties that might theoretically result from striking on those spots. Essentially, the system offers an estimation of probable fatalities and evaluates the strategic value of targeting specific areas. This process relies on probabilistic inference, which involves analyzing previously gathered data to discern patterns and make recommendations based on probability. In stark contrast to the Greek etymology of its name, euangelion, implying good news, the Gospel has instead unleashed unparalleled death and devastation upon the Palestinian soil. Yet, despite its biblical namesake suggesting absolute truth and an infallible message, Habsora, like all machine learning systems, operates on correlation rather than causation and likelihood rather than certainty. 

In addition to reinforcing the misleading human inclination to view machines as supposedly impartial and objective – which is a key factor shaping contemporary AI ideology and the ‘hype’ behind it – the integration of such technologies within military frameworks precipitates a drastic escalation in the pace of warfare and, consequently, in the dispensation of lethal force at an unprecedented speed. In what is perceived as a God-like manner, this AI possesses the capacity to analyze immense volumes of data and formulate decisions at rates far surpassing human cognition. As indicated by a former head of the IDF, while human intelligence analysts typically identify around 50 bombing targets annually, Habsora can generate up to 100 targets per day, accompanied by real-time recommendations regarding which targets should be prioritized. “We use an algorithm to evaluate how many civilians are remaining. It gives us a green, yellow, or red, like a traffic signal,” a former senior Israeli military source emphasized in an interview with the Guardian.

In promotional videos featured on the IDF website, the Gospel is depicted offering its identified targets to the military. Accompanied by a crescendo of dramatic music, the sequences evoke a video game-like atmosphere, with a viewfinder scanning, locking onto, and ultimately destroying targets. Buildings, appearing desolate and isolated, are methodically and triumphantly demolished. These promotional visuals echo the rhetoric of precision, accuracy, and effectiveness consistently emphasized by the Israeli military in public statements. They portray Palestinian territory as a mere array of targets to be aimed at and fired upon, rendering it a vacant landscape devoid of its inhabitants. Essentially, an empty wasteland. AI orchestrates war efforts with a cold efficiency, speed, and a facade of ‘rationality’, transforming the battlefield into a clinical checklist, much like an assembly line in a manufacturing plant. At the same time, everything feels familiar and non-threatening, resembling the innocuousness of an urban setting with traffic lights, as if it were unrelated to the killing of humans and the annihilation of civilian infrastructure. 

Within the Gospel’s psychogeography, where red, yellow, and green markers emerge on the Gaza map, the Palestinian people have been rendered into “power targets.” These targets extend beyond purely military objectives to include private homes, high-rise buildings, public facilities, and critical infrastructure. According to an investigation carried out by +972 Magazine and Local Call, since the early days of the current war on Gaza the number of these power targets, alongside “operative homes” suspected of housing a single resident affiliated with Hamas, has outweighed the count of purely military targets. As outlined by various sources referenced in the article, long-standing military protocols in Israel typically mandate that strikes on power targets occur only when the buildings were unoccupied during the attack. However, a notable departure from this norm has occurred since October 7, 2023, as evidenced by a multitude of news reports and social media snippets documenting the unprecedented annihilation of civilian infrastructure – and of civilian lives – in Gaza.

An emerging mode of warfare?

Technologies like the Gospel act as tools for reinforcing an ideology promoting the dehumanization or inhumanization of the Palestinian people; a dynamic that has dramatically accelerated in the post-October 7 scenario. 

Following the Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, technologies such as the Gospel have become key in advancing a warfare strategy that emphasizes remote engagement. This approach is deeply rooted in a global surveillance and automated warfare ideology, prioritizing notions of efficiency and faultlessness. This global trend of conducting warfare ‘from a distance’ further exacerbates the long-standing process of dehumanizing or inhumanizing Palestinians, a pattern established over many years that is closely associated with the indiscriminate killing of civilian lives. 

The strategy of unleashing extensive harm upon the civilian population, in fact, is not novel for the IDF. Rather, it constitutes an expansion and intensification of the so-called Dahiya Doctrine, established in the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah. The underlying logic is that by employing disproportionate force against civilian targets, Israel would aim at compelling the populace to exert pressure to halt the guerrilla group’s offensive. At the same time, this has served as a propaganda device targeting the Israeli public with the aim of emphasizing the extensive damage inflicted on the enemy and showcasing the military’s accomplishments, in an effort to attract as many likes and shares as possible and win the public’s hearts and minds.

However, a fundamentally new dynamic is at play concerning power targets and the decimation of civilian life and infrastructure in Gaza post-October 7, 2023. There is an underlying belief that Gaza’s population is inherently complicit in the actions of Hamas, making it impossible to disentangle the two entities. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari asserts that “Hamas has systematically embedded its terror infrastructure inside and under civilian areas in Gaza as part of its human-shield strategy.” Similarly, a former intelligence official remarked that “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so.” As Israeli President Isaac Herzog has unequivocally stated, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” This logic of ’embedment’ provides the rationale behind the unprecedented violence unfolding on the ground, a situation UN Secretary-General Guterres characterized as “a collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” 

Palestinians have been offended, degraded, and subjected to dehumanizing language in Israel’s official rhetoric. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant infamously declared as early as October 10, 2023, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” 

This degrading language is not new, though. Arabs are like “drugged cockroaches in a bottle,” former Israeli army chief of staff Gen. Rafael Eitan reportedly declared during an Israeli parliamentary committee hearing in 1983. Such comparisons can engender a primal impulse toward violence, similar to the visceral reaction when confronting a vermin infestation, prompting efforts to eradicate the perceived threat. From cockroaches to the “microbes” labeling the Khmer Rouge’s opponents, genocidal history is replete with dehumanizing language that incites violent expulsion and complete annihilation of those targeted by such rhetoric.

Recognizing the colonial origins of these violent dynamics is essential, as emphasized by physicians Ghassan Abu Sitta and Rupa Marya in their article “The Deep Medicine of Rehumanizing Palestinians”. Naming, labeling, and categorizing are integral to the process of ‘othering’, which normalizes violence, particularly when the latter becomes metaphorically associated with eradicating a virus or infection. Palestinians have not only been labeled as “human animals.” They have also been portrayed as immune to trauma, depicted as individuals “whose bodies are not modern or civilized enough to experience trauma,” accustomed to living in a “culture of death,” as Lamia Moghnieh observes. Palestinian trauma is often dismissed, even when extensively documented in a vast array of visual imagery exposing settler violence, land encroachments, and various forms of abuse endured by the local population on a daily basis. However, as Antony Loewenstein asserts in his meticulously researched work, “The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World,” the media visibility of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians fails to resonate with those who do not perceive Palestinians as human beings but, rather, as “a racial group who deserve punishment and death.”

Using tech tools to further enhance this dehumanization process is a trajectory that began long before the current conflict, with Israel extensively employing AI-powered tools for security purposes in the Occupied West Bank since 2018. For instance, a facial recognition system named Red Wolf was utilized to unlawfully collect and categorize biometric data of the Palestinian population, enabling the monitoring, control, and restriction of their movements. This surveillance tool, disguised in the familiar and user-friendly form of a mobile app, has been utilized by the Israeli military at checkpoints, frequently without the knowledge of Palestinian citizens waiting in line. This practice aligns with what Amnesty International has characterized as “automated apartheid.”

Rehumanizing through technology 

By contrast, Israeli companies have employed AI technology to (re)humanize Israeli civilians held captive by Hamas, aiming to garner support for their cause on the global stage. In a touching video translated into multiple languages, a 3-year-old blonde child is seen calling out for her mother. “Why are we here?” she asks, her eyes fixed directly on the camera. “I want to go home,” she adds, her gaze appealing directly to the audience. “I miss my friends,” a young boy’s voice echoes. “I miss playing soccer, Mom. Do my friends even think about me?”. The closing scene is especially poignant: “I keep telling myself it’s just a story,” he says, “but it’s such a bad one. Who would write this kind of story?” he finally asks, gazing into the camera with his innocent yet sorrowful eyes. “Someone in Gaza needs to talk to you,” the opening caption of both videos reads. Featured are Yael and Nave Shoham, both abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and held captive since. The closing credits underline, “To hear their voices, we needed to use AI,” subtly suggesting that the only voices considered legitimate from Gaza are those of the Israeli hostages. This leaves the local Palestinian population voiceless, entirely omitted from the narrative.

Shiran Mlamdovsky Somech, the founder of Generative AI for Good, the Israeli company behind the ‘Be their voice’ campaign, emphasizes the potential of machine learning technology “to effect real social change”. In particular, she asserts that generative AI “can foster empathy and offer human-like experiences…to improve and even save lives.”  The company’s website showcases other initiatives aligned with this approach, such as “Listen to my voice,” where AI-powered voices of victims’ of domestic violence advocate for societal change from beyond the grave; or “March of the Living,” using AI to bring Holocaust survivors back to life, allowing them to share their stories of resistance against Nazism to inspire future generations. 

Here, the blending of archival footage with synthetic imagery breathes new life into historical documentation, infusing the narrative with a contemporary resonance. The voices of the Holocaust survivors, referred to proudly as ‘fighters’ on the company’s website, are imbued with a tone that emphasizes their acts of resistance. Their direct gaze into the camera and the emphasis on their resistance actions all serve to evoke a deeper sense of empathy and inspire feelings of humanity and dignity in their endeavors. Additionally, the inclusion of a female fighter in the video further strengthens this narrative, indirectly enhancing the portrayal of Israel as a bastion of justice and equality. This parallels the IDF’s social media strategy that, before the current war on Gaza, sought to associate the government’s image with (perceived to be) Western ideals, such as feminism and LGBTQIA+ inclusivity.

 The “Be Their Voice” campaign fits within this ideological structure, both through its visual style and the message it conveys. It urges the international community to elevate the voices of the silenced, particularly the children held captive by Hamas. Unlike the Gospel and its inner dehumanizing -and killing- mechanism, here AI is utilized as an inventive platform to nurture empathy among viewers. The direct appeal from the AI-generated child-like eyes seeks to evoke compassion, with the goal of rallying public support for their plight. 

The only voices we hear from Gaza are these AI made Israeli children, further removing Palestinians from the narrative and implicitly endorsing the view that the area is solely under Hamas’ control, portrayed as a domain of death and violence, empty of both people and humanity. The genuine voices of Gaza’s population are strikingly missing, even in the synthetic realm of this seemingly benevolent generative AI ‘for good’.

Postscriptum

I intended to test AI biases on this topic. When inputting this text for proofreading, ChatGPT categorized it under the label ‘AI empowering Gaza’. Additionally, it suggested replacing expressions like ‘the killing of humans’ with ‘human casualties’, and ‘annihilation of civilian facilities and civilian bodies’ with ‘loss of civilian lives’.

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