Politics
Said's Orientalism in the Age of AI Image Generation
When you ask a model to generate 'a Middle Eastern city', what does it show you? The bias isn't new — only the scale is.
Dina Al-Rashid2 min · April 5, 2026
Author
London
Dina is a researcher in AI ethics and postcolonial theory. She is interested in whose assumptions get encoded into systems that present themselves as neutral.
Writing
2 piecesWhen you ask a model to generate 'a Middle Eastern city', what does it show you? The bias isn't new — only the scale is.
Information overload is not a side effect of the modern media system. It is the product. Confusion, not consent, is what power requires.