The World Without Them

Documentary-style video that explores the extinction of stock footage images. The narrator offers commentary on the images’ behaviour, intricate habits, and the challenges that have placed them on the endangered list. These images form part of our visual cultural DNA—for better or worse—reinforcing biases and stereotypes. They serve as an archive of the present, now fuelling AI datasets to generate the next wave of imagery. AI-generated images do not merely coexist with traditional ones; they absorb and transform them through statistical processing, fundamentally altering this visual ecosystem.