Sydney Keller

Project Overview
Given the prompt “Replicas, Counterfeits, Forgeries & Imposters,” I created a website selling vintage behind the scenes images from iconic movies – only thing was that these ‘valuable’ images were AI generated. Shh : )

Duration
2 weeks

Solo Project

Introduction
I really struggled to start this project. The prompt, being only four words, was purposely left vague. I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around the concepts of imposter or counterfeit, while creating something that was uniquely mine and original. I knew what the words meant by definition, but I didn’t know what to do with them.

Around the same I had been having a lot of fun experimenting and interacting with ChatGPT. I started to consider the ethics of this new wave of AI and the possibility that some day soon I may not even know I was interacting with an AI, thinking rather that I was talking to another human. AI could become an imposter of sorts, replicating our behavior and tricking us into spending money, sharing personal information, or believing certain things as fact.

I decided to run with this idea and made my project about creating a conversation around the exciting but dangerous new possibilities of AI. To do this I created an imposter website selling counterfeit AI generated “behind the scenes” images from iconic movies and TV shows.

The Website
Click here to browse the website.
**Please note that the shopping cart icon and pop-up cart in the website are not the color and overall design that I would have chosen. I would have had to pay a monthly fee to change it and since the project is over it doesn’t make sense for me to keep paying for a better icon.

I made images for a total of seven movies including Interstellar (2014), two Star Wars movies (1977, 1983), Scream (1996) and The Breakfast Club (1985).

I added pages in my website for each film, giving a short description with the images. I also decided to include a collection condition statement that informed possible buyers on the state of each image, something I had noted on professional websites.

In order to make the website more ‘legitimate’ I made the site into a working online shop in which buyers can shop, add their favorite images to cart, and checkout.  (I excluded the payment section so that people couldn’t actually pay for any images and I wouldn’t get sued.)

A snippet of the shopping page

An example cart at checkout