Artist contributions to the Better Images of AI library have always served a really important role in relation to fostering understanding and critical thinking about AI technologies and their context. Images facilitate deeper inquiries into the nature of AI, its history, and ethical, social, political and legal implications.
When artists create better images of AI, they often have to grapple with these narratives in their attempts to more realistically portray the technology and point towards its strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, as artists freely share these images in our library, others can benefit from learning about the artist’s own internal motivations (which are provided in the descriptions) but the images can also inspire users’ own musings.
In this series of blog posts, some of our volunteer stewards are each taking turns to choose an image from the Archival Images of AI collection and unpack the artist’s processes and explore what that image means to them.
At the end of 2024, we released the Archival Images of AI Playbook with AIxDESIGN and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. The playbook explores how existing images – especially those from digital heritage collections – can help us craft more meaningful visual narratives about AI. Through various image-makers’ own attempts to make better images of AI, the playbook shares numerous techniques which can teach you how to transform existing images into new creations.
Here, Rameez Raja unpacks ‘AI Am Over It’ – Nadia Piet’s (an image-maker) own better image of AI that was created for the playbook. Rameez personally reflects on his feelings towards AI amidst a never-ending stream of AI hype and ‘LinkedIn guru hot takes’ on the latest developments in the space. Despite the increasing infiltration of AI into society, Rameez comments on how Piet’s image points to a growing resistance in society against using AI as developers steal artwork from creators, further misinformation, and challenge our sense of self.
Nadia Piet & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN / Better Images of AI / CC BY 4
“So, what do you think of AI?”. “I’m tired of it.”
This is the go-to question that always finds its way to me—at family dinners, in WhatsApp groups, or halfway through a drink with someone. And truthfully? It exhausts me. Not because I’m indifferent—far from it. I spend my days thinking deeply about technology, analysing platforms, working at the intersection of AI, society, and policy. But lately, I’ve been feeling the weight of it all. My brain feels like it’s buffering.
There’s something about the pace, the hype, the never-ending stream of think-pieces, hot takes, and LinkedIn gurus that leaves me exhausted. One day it’s agents, the next it’s Sora, then AutoGPT—each promising disruption, innovation, or a new dawn. And yet, behind all that noise, the human questions remain: Who is this tech serving? Who’s left out? And most of all—how are we feeling in the face of it?
That’s why Nadia Piet’s artwork, AI Am Over It, resonated with me. It comments on AI fatigue, illustrating how the overwhelming flood of tools and constant influx of headlines leaves most people feeling dizzy and disoriented. With AI icons swirling around the figure’s head, it captures the mental overload and confusion many feel as they struggle to keep up with rapid developments / the fast-paced AI landscape.
It feels like a snapshot of my inner world: a human figure—serene, stoic—surrounded by a chaotic halo of AI logos competing for attention. The AI fatigue is real. The figure—drawn from what looks like a Renaissance or alchemical manuscript—evokes an age of inquiry, mysticism, and visionary thinking. But here, he’s not discovering truths. He’s being drowned in them. He’s being submerged in signals—too many, too loud, too fast to make sense of.
AI Overload
The image captures what AI has become for so many of us: not a revelation, but a cognitive overload. The myth of AI as a rational, godlike mind—an Enlightenment fantasy—is clashing with the reality of our current AI landscape: noisy, exploitative, corporatised. The logos circling the figure don’t represent knowledge; they represent branding, monetisation, and an endless feed of skewed updates.
Another layer that struck me was that the central figure might as well be a ghost from the past. A time traveler from an era where knowledge was sacred, slow, and wrapped in ritual. The alchemists, the philosophers, the mystics—they sought truth through wonder. Today, we scrape, prompt, and automate. In Piet’s image, this archival human seems caught in a time loop, trapped in the chaos of modern signals. There’s a sadness to it. A sense of lost dialogue between worlds.
We’re not just engaging with AI anymore—we’re surrounded by it. That’s what I see in those orbiting logos. A kind of orbital trap, where our thoughts, emotions, and even our sense of self are influenced by algorithmic systems. Elon Musk’s Grok being used to clap back at posts on X is a perfect example of this cultural drift. AI isn’t just answering questions—it’s shaping how we argue, how we feel, how we relate to each other. It’s performance masked as fact-checking, surveillance disguised as help.
And while some celebrate the spread of these tools as progress, many of us are quietly turning away. There’s a kind of reverse effect happening: the more AI saturates every part of public discourse, the more we begin to tune out. When everyone is suddenly an expert, a prompt engineer, or a tech visionary, the truth becomes harder to locate. In that fog of hot takes and hype, we lose clarity. We lose trust. We lose the human signal in the noise.
Seeing Through the Hype
What ‘AI Am Over It’ does so powerfully is that it doesn’t just document the presence of AI—it critiques it. The title is a mood, a manifesto, a coping mechanism. It aligns with broader movements we’re seeing across the creative world. Take the backlash from artists like Paul McCartney or Kate Bush, who’ve criticised AI companies for using their voices or songs without permission. That outrage has led to tangible action—like amendments pushing for more transparency and economic impact assessments in AI development.
We need more of this. Because unregulated AI doesn’t just risk misinformation—it risks stagnation. Creativity becomes lazy when it’s just derivative output from a scraped dataset. Why explore new ideas when you can prompt a remix? If we lean too heavily on AI to create, to ideate, to think, we may lose touch with what it means to make something truly original. The danger isn’t just economic—it’s existential. Are we becoming passive consumers of pre-generated thought?
This is where Piet’s image becomes more than aesthetic. It’s archival. It preserves a moment of resistance, a visual reminder that AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a terrain we navigate daily, often without clear maps. And like any map, the legends matter. Whose vision is being drawn? Who controls the ink? By invoking a figure from the past, the image also invites us to reflect on the longer history of AI—its myths, its cycles of hype, and the often invisible human labour that has always underpinned technological change. Archival imagery, in this way, becomes a tool for challenging present-day narratives, reminding us that today’s ‘new’ is often built on forgotten or overlooked foundations.
And then there’s the meme-ification of it all. AI isn’t just a tool—it’s become part of our collective moodboard. The rise of “Ghiblification,” where AI generates images in the Studio Ghibli style, might seem innocent or even charming. But it’s another front in the conversation over cultural ownership. Art as aesthetic, stripped of context, style without story. These remixes flatten rather than deepen our understanding. They don’t honour artistry—they commodify it.
That’s why I keep returning to ‘AI Am Over It’. It’s not prescriptive. It doesn’t try to tell us what AI is or what we should think. It simply reflects. It holds up a mirror to our moment—messy, noisy, and at times, disillusioned. But it also quietly reminds us that we’re still here. That amidst the automation, the chaos, the acceleration, the human is not lost – just tired!
Maybe being “over it” isn’t the end. Maybe it’s the start of something else—a pause, a breath, a reorientation. A chance to find our own orbit again.
About the author
Rameez Raja (he/him) is a data analytics engineer and storyteller, passionate about AI and designing systems that foster connection for a healthier society. A UCL graduate, he is pursuing an MS in AI at the University of Bath and advocates for trustworthy communication as essential to thriving democracies and communities.
If you want to contribute to our new blog series, ‘Through My Eyes’, by selecting an image from the Better Images of AI Library and exploring what the image means to you, get in touch (info@betterimagesofai.org).
