Artificially Nude

Re-negotiating GenAI in Arvida Byström’s "In the Clouds"

Abstract

The Swedish artist Arvida Byström published In the Clouds in 2024. In this article, we analyze the artistic project and publication as a fourth-wave feminist examination of AI-generated imagery. Utilizing the app Undress to produce photorealistic nude images of her “AI-self,” Byström investigates how generative AI (GenAI) and digital platforms create and reinforce a sexualized, heteronormative masculine gaze on the female body. Combining performative experiments, audience interaction on the platform Sunroom, and a visual progression from pornographic ideals to glitch aesthetics, Byström explores how GenAI can function as a means for critique, subversion, and emancipation. The article discusses how Byström’s artistic approach challenges traditional notions of authenticity, desire, and pornification. Through appropriating technological and visual codes, she reclaims agency of her digital representation. Situating her project within broader artistic contexts and theories concerning the digital gaze, platform culture, and glitch aesthetics, we argue that In the Clouds critically exposes and creatively renegotiates the visual and cultural frameworks in which generative AI is enmeshed.