AI and generational amnesia: An ecological approach to ‘new memory’ regimes

Abstract

This article argues that the environmental contexts of memory are vulnerable to Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated distortions. By addressing the broader ecological implications for AI’s integration into society, this article looks beyond a sociotechnical dimension to explore the potential for AI to complicate environmental memory and its role in shaping human–environment relations. First, I address how the manipulation and falsification of memory risks undermining intergenerational transmission of environmental knowledge. Second, I examine how AI-generated blurring of boundaries between real and unreal can lead to collective inaction on environmental challenges. By identifying memory’s central role in addressing environmental crisis, this article places emerging debates on memory in the AI era in direct conversation with environmental discourse and scholarship.