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...

This is my last weekend before returning to Cambridge to write my PhD dissertation. Between me and the void stands coffee, pastries, books. But it's drawing all these things that has done the best job at alleviating my stress.

My piece on creative labour is part of the 50 most read articles on It's Nice That!