Spectral imaginings and sympoietic creativity: AI hallucinations and the ethics of posthuman creativity

Abstract

This paper reimagines AI hallucinations, instances where large language models (LLMs) generate coherent yet factually ungrounded content, as posthuman hermeneutic practices, where human and machine agencies entangle to produce new modes of meaning-making. Moving beyond binary framings of hallucinations as flaws or features, the analysis situates them within Donna Haraway's sympoietic ethics and proposes sympoietic creativity between human and AI, arguing that these generative anomalies are not errors but provocations for rethinking creativity as a distributed and collaborative act. Through case studies of models like DeepSeek-R1 and artistic projects such as Pharmako-AI (2021), this article demonstrates how hallucinations act as hermeneutic knots, sites where algorithmic noise is curated into cultural critique and interspecies narratives. By contrasting human creativity that is rooted in intentionality and embodiment with AI's stochastic recombination, this paper exposes the ontological chasm between anthropocentric artistry and machine-generated “spectral pantomimes.” Ultimately, the article challenges stakeholders to embrace AI's disruptive potential, not as a tool for replication but as a mediator for posthuman futures, where creativity is redefined through justice, relationality, and the radical interdependence of human and non-human agents.