A photo of a natural disaster that never happened goes viral on social media and shapes public debate. A flawless, non-existent face promotes a beauty product in an advertising campaign. A video shows a politician saying words they never uttered. These are just a few examples of how images generated by artificial intelligence are transforming the way we perceive reality, truth, and even ourselves.
Starting from such real-life scenarios, the new book by Veronica Neri, Ethics and the Artificial Image – Accountability and Reliability for a New Status of the Visual, recently published by Mimesis International, addresses a crucial question: what happens when images stop representing the world and start shaping it?
Neri observes that artificial images do not merely depict the world, they also interpret, filter and shape it. Every image generated by an algorithm conveys values, evokes emotions, and influences collective behaviour. Hyperrealistic photographs and videos produced by neural networks can create a powerful “truth effect”, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from simulation.
In this context, Neri warns that the bond of trust between viewers and what is shown begins to fracture. Therefore, it is urgent to redefine the ethical principles that should guide the design and use of visual technologies based on artificial intelligence. The book intertwines philosophy, technology and law, linking the evolution of visual culture to recent European regulations — from the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) to the Ethical Guidelines for AI — and proposes an ethical approach that combines shared responsibility, transparency, awareness, and an understanding of human and technological limitations.
Supported by a contribution from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pisa as part of the European project FAIR – Future Artificial Intelligence Research, the volume concludes with a warning: in a world where the boundary between image and simulacrum is fading, only an ethics of seeing can restore meaning and freedom to our gaze.
Veronica Neri is an Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Pisa, where she teaches Media Ethics. She is a member of the PhD Board in Philosophy of the Universities of Pisa and Florence and serves on the editorial board of Teoria. Her recent research focuses on the ethics of public communication, advertising, and visual media, with particular attention to the moral implications of artificial intelligence.
