AI, Visual Sociology, and the Crisis of Truth

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is transforming the production, circulation, and interpretation of visual culture. From generative image systems and synthetic video to algorithmic surveillance and platform moderation, AI technologies are reshaping how social reality is represented, contested, and authenticated. At the same time, these developments intensify a wider “crisis of truth” in public life, where distinctions between evidence, fabrication, documentation, and simulation are increasingly unstable.

As Fred Ritchin (2025) argues, in this emerging synthetic age visual practitioners must become even more vigilant and expansive in explaining their images. This session takes that challenge as a starting point for reconsidering the responsibilities of visual sociology. How do visual sociologists respond to the proliferation of deepfakes, synthetic imagery, automated image analysis, and algorithmically curated visibility? What happens to the evidentiary status of photographs and video when images are generated without referents? How are trust, witnessing, and credibility negotiated within digital visual cultures increasingly shaped by corporate technological power?

We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical papers addressing the opportunities and risks posed by AI within visual research, pedagogy, activism, and public sociology. Possible topics include AI and visual disinformation; platform governance; surveillance and inequality; the politics of visibility and invisibility; decolonial and feminist critiques of AI imaging systems; ethics of synthetic visual data; and the use of AI tools within participatory and creative methodologies.

The session aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on how visual sociology can critically engage emerging technologies while defending democratic forms of knowledge, accountability, and visual truth.