The new James Bond was recommended by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The choice was Henry Cavill, the British actor who became famous for playing Superman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). It is the first case of AI-assisted “casting” and bears the signature of Largo Films, the filmmaking arm of Switzerland’s Largo.ai.
The recommendation disappoints those who expected to see the first Black woman in the lead role, as widely reported last year. Although this is a recommendation rather than a final decision, the selection reveals more than the exponential diversification of Artificial Intelligence’s use in culture. It reveals the power of algorithmic racism.
(…)
Algorithmic racism is what this situation expresses. Not because the algorithm can be prejudiced in itself, but because the universe of data that built it reflects the structural racism of the industry and society to which it belongs, extending that racism in new directions.
Social violence thus takes on a datafied form within the assumptions of its architecture. After all, searching for a new Bond on the basis of what the old Bond has always been could hardly yield a result very different from one that confirms the enduring James Bond model: a white man with European features who, at the extreme of his macho idealization, always has a beautiful woman to adorn his daring exploits.