Synthetic Images, Synthetic Minds (SISMi) investigates how generative AI image systems are transforming images from discrete artefacts into cognitive interfaces that couple language, perception and decision-making. Anchored in visual culture, media and communication studies, STS and philosophy of mind, the project shifts attention from individual AI-generated pictures to the model pipelines, datasets and interfaces that structure what can be pictured, imagined and known. It examines how text–image–text loops, everyday prompting practices and platform defaults recalibrate people’s imaginative priors and habits of evaluation – a process the project terms “cognitive hacking” – and develops a framework for “image-thinking” that treats images as active instruments of reasoning rather than passive representations. Over four years, SISMi will generate an Image-Thinking Primer for teaching, a Model-as-Medium Field Guide, open interpretability notebooks, a media-literacy toolkit and a public exhibition that together equip scholars, students and wider publics to read synthetic image systems as cultural operators rather than opaque technical utilities. The project is led by Yanai Toister at Tampere University’s Visual Studies Lab (PI) , alongside Prof. Joanna Zylinska at King’s College, London (co-PI).
Synthetic Images, Synthetic Minds
