🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work. This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public. Please spread the word. 🧵 1/4

"How did we get here? How had copyright, which I thought was in artists' corner, become the justification for their exploitation? To understand this, I had to understand how copyright came about, and how its origin story erased artists entirely to fetishize “The Work.”"

This has been a super helpful guide by @emilymbender.bsky.social, Peter Zuckerman and @nannainie.bsky.social as I'm editing my thesis. Highly recommend. I low key wish this would be a plug-in that would underline the red flaggy turns of phrases as I'm writing. 😮‍💨 firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

May I suggest a weekend read? It’s about artists and why copyright is so ill-suited to protect them against AI companies. open.substack.com/pub/julienpo...

We have another exciting CFP! "Noisy Systems: Aesthetics, Epistemology & Computation examines noise across technical, social, and cultural domains, bringing together machine learning, critical AI studies, media theory and archaeology, art history, philosophy, and practice-based research."

"How did we get here? How had copyright, which I thought was in artists' corner, become the justification for their exploitation? To understand this, I had to understand how copyright came about, and how its origin story erased artists entirely to fetishize “The Work.”"

"In the 🇺🇸, artists who fight for [their] art might have better chances doing so cloaked as businesses. The artists in Andersen v. Stability AI went from making their case as persons w/ identities that had been stolen by businesses to becoming businesses w/ brands fighting against unfair competition"

2026 Out: Copyright

I tried to process what I'm seeing unfolding in the US in a new essay about visuality, countervisuality and how to look back at imperial complexes. open.substack.com/pub/julienpo...

How many layers of simulacra deep is this? 😰

The CfPs for LavLang32 at Edinburgh is now OPEN! A reminder of our stellar lineup: • Dr. Nikki Lane (Duke) • Dr. Kevin Guyan (UoE) • Prof. Erez Levon (Bern) • Dr. Stamatina Katsiveli (American College of Greece) • Dr. Eddie Ungless (UoE) Submit a paper here: lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk?page_id=231

2026 in: a new website, just for academic stuff. 👨‍🏫 julienporquet.org

We are studying the sentiments of visual artists towards generative AI in the workplace and their impacts on creative careers. If you're an artist, please consider filling out this recruitment form for access to our survey! cmu.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Excited to announce @leverhulmecal.bsky.social posts - we are looking for 7 interdisciplinary fellows to join our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, closing date 30 January 2026 (1/3) durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

"Liz Kendall, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, told parliament on Monday there was “no clear consensus” on the issue" Consensus: General agreement among a few tech companies despite thousands of artists' disagreement. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

What a fun research program ahead! A must read to think about some of the options.

I never blame individual illustrators, everyone needs to pay bills, etc. but... 🤢

Yesterday the Israel occupying forces attacked Birzeit University (near Ramallah), as well as al-Quds University (near Jerusalem), as well as mounting numerous raids across the West Bank www.newarab.com/news/israeli...

"When we approach life’s experiences with a narrow problem-solving orientation, automation can look like an attractive answer." A great essay for any computer scientist/engineer working on automating human activities.

"I’m exhausted by this constant sale of epistemic revolutions, to be told everything is going to change from now on, over and over again. So many from now ons. I’m exhausted to have to be amazed by nonsensical images, to pretend they change how I see the world as if the world I know is an image."

For scholars interested in illustration and writing for children, we’re offering a research fellowship — $4,000 to support research, and a very easy application. Please apply! Please repost! library.uconn.edu/location/asc...

„I’m exhausted to have to be amazed by nonsensical images, to pretend they change how I see the world as if the world I know is an image.“ Sehr lesenswertes Essay (wie immer) von @julienporquet.bsky.social

I wrote an essay about Nano Banana Pro and the supposed 'end of photographic evidence'! julienposture.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

On my way to Leiden for the first 'Linguistic Anthropology in Europe' conference to talk about the division of (semiotic) labour in Text-to-Image models. If you're around come say hi!

"Creativity" here stands for value-through-scarcity, its human uniqueness is its market value, and vice versa. But creativity means many other things, and most of those are not related to market incentives, profit and capitalization.

"Useful social science theories predict behavior across settings." No.

📣 I forgot to share this peer review article on the concept of #style through time, from the first copyright laws in eighteenth-century England to today's AI disputes! It's published in the Journal of #illustration. intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...

While I'm wary of the "AI is killing –" framing (because it fails to account for the preexisting systemic conditions in which machine learning technologies are presented as optimizing, streamlining, etc.), it would be nice to have some illustrators represented. Do reach out and share your stories!

It was so wonderful to talk to Julien about @armadillostock.bsky.social, illustration licensing, artist organizing, and more! There's even audio if you prefer listening to reading. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the things I love!

I’m so excited to share this interview with @michelerosenthal.com about her alternative licensing platform @armadillostock.bsky.social! We discuss: 🖼️ The economy and ecology of stock image platforms 🤖 Their relationship with AI ✊The role of organizing for freelance artists

This is a very exciting project by and for illustrators and an excellent example of bottom-up organizing among freelance workers! Go check it out, share and support if you can!

I had the pleasure of being profiled in @thephilanthropist.ca about my work as an illustrator and anthropologist. These two layers of my practice rarely get to shine under the same roof, so many thanks to @gordonbowness.bsky.social for the generous portrait! thephilanthropist.ca/2025/07/illu...

Interesting application of Berkeley anthropologist Alexei Yurchak's theory of "hypernormalization" (developed for 1980s USSR) to the USA over the past few months www.theguardian.com/wellness/ng-...

Starting my conference marathon this Saturday at the University of Pennsylvania Semiotic Anthropology Conference (online). "From artists’ hands to clients’ words: Styles, Text-to-Image algorithms and the division of creative labor." Next stop, Vienna and Paris! www.upennsemioticslab.com

This data center organizing guide from @kairosfellows.bsky.social and @mediajustice.bsky.social is so f’ing good: concise, informative, and beautifully designed. Print it out, make a zine, etc www.kairosfellows.org/fightdatacen...

I'll be talking about experimental ethnography and HCI over there next week!

Little academic milestone: this week I got my first ever citation in another paper! And I couldn't be happier that it's about artists, creative labor and machine learning. 🎉📚

“The A.I. is huge. A tsunami. But it’s not me. It can’t touch my me-ness. It doesn’t know what it is to be human, to be me.” Oh good, I'm glad to know students and profs in ivy league universities don't feel that their individual "me-ness" is threatened by "AI". 🙃

After sharing the preprint, here is our officially published #CHI2025 paper: 𝐂𝐨𝐩𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐞, 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞: 𝐈𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬' 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐈 𝐒𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫 with @sitong-wang.bsky.social and Lydia Chilton dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

The full report by the Tony Blair Institute is out, in which they detail how copyright should be "rebooted" in the AI age. It reads like a big tech lobbying document. I hope they will be asked serious questions at its launch in London today. Some very brief highlights: 🧵 1/8

So, @elsevierconnect.bsky.social added an AI question and answer to my article in Computer & Education. The answers are wrong! They did not ask permission! The answers are WRONG! How is this science?!

Hello, I finally updated my website to include my research. julienposture.com/research-1

Important resource re: Mandalay earthquake in Myanmar. ⬇️

If you want to help victims of the earthquake in Myanmar, I recommend donating to smaller initiatives: 1. Better Burma (www.gofundme.com/f/emergency-...) 2. Advance Myanmar (www.advancemyanmar.org/myanmar-eart...) 3. My PhD student from Mandalay is collecting funds www.gofundme.com/f/donation-t...

This week the world got Ghiblified, pointing once more that styles are more than mere surface, but essential parts of our cultural, political and economic lives. My PhD is about the political economy of how humans and machines see style in the US illustration industry, and I have thoughts! 🧵1/

I made this image! It's always a treat to illustrate some nerdy neuroscience.

I'm so excited to share our paper for #chi2025: "Copying style, Extracting value: Illustrators' Perception of AI Style Transfer and its Impact on Creative Labor" As an anthropologist, I'm delighted to be able to contribute to interdisciplinary conversations on AI and art! arxiv.org/abs/2409.17410

New issue of the CUSAS magazine on #anthropology and fiction with amazing writing my Michael Jackson, Lisa Stevenson and many more! Must read www.cusas.socanth.cam.ac.uk/magazine-hom...