The rise of digital blackface has become a pressing concern in the United States, with the proliferation of AI-generated videos and images that perpetuate racist stereotypes and caricatures of Black people. This phenomenon has been exacerbated by the Trump administration's use of such technology to spread disinformation and propaganda. According to Safiya Umoja Noble, a UCLA gender studies professor, the digital blackface videos are "really pulling from the same racist and sexist stereotypes and tropes that have been used for centuries."
The term digital blackface was coined in a 2006 academic paper to describe the practice of non-Black individuals using Black cultural expressions and images online without permission or proper understanding. Mia Moody, a Baylor University journalism professor, notes that this form of cultural appropriation has been used to gain cultural capital and respect online. However, it has also led to the exploitation and marginalization of Black people, particularly Black women.
The use of digital blackface has become increasingly sophisticated with the development of AI technology. OpenAI's text-to-video app Sora has been used to create hyperrealistic videos that have been used to sully the image of Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent Black figures. These videos have sparked ethical debates about the use of synthetic resurrection and the potential for AI-generated content to be used as a tool for propaganda and disinformation.
Roots of Digital Blackface
The roots of digital blackface can be traced back to the minstrel shows of the 19th century, where white performers would use grease paint to caricature Black features and perform exaggerated routines of Black laziness, buffoonery, and hypersexuality. Thomas D Rice, a Manhattan playwright, popularized the character of Jim Crow, which became a shorthand for the forced racial segregation policies in the American South that endured until the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Minstrelsy faded from the spotlight by the early 20th century, but its toxic residue lingered in American culture. The use of digital blackface has revived this toxic legacy, with the internet providing a platform for the widespread dissemination of racist and sexist stereotypes. Researchers such as Noble and MIT's Joy Buolamwini have been sounding the alarm about the inherent racial biases in the coding of algorithms related to medical treatment, loan applications, hiring decisions, and facial recognition.
Efforts to Address Digital Blackface
Tech firms have made some efforts to stem the tide of digital blackface. OpenAI, Google, and the AI image generator Midjourney have disallowed deepfakes of Martin Luther King Jr. and other American icons. Meta deleted two of its own AI blackface characters after allegations of their non-diverse development team fueled criticism. However, these efforts have been met with limited success, and the use of digital blackface continues to spread.
Black in AI and the Distributed AI Research Institute (Dair) are among the handful of affinity groups that have pushed for diversity and community input in AI model-building to address programming bias. The AI Now Institute and Partnership on AI have highlighted the risks of AI systems learning from marginalized communities' data and noted that tech companies could provide mechanisms such as data opt-outs to help limit harmful or exploitative uses.
The Impact of Digital Blackface
The precise impact of AI-generated digital blackface is difficult to quantify, but its use by the Trump administration highlights its potential as a powerful tool of official disinformation. The Obama Truth Social entry revived a slur that has festered for years in darker online corners, and one that rhymes with Trump's sustained efforts to denigrate the former first family.
Beyond laundering bigotry as news, digital blackface exposes Black users to a level of personalized abuse and harassment that harkens to a minstrelsy heyday when racists were fully empowered to express their bigotry unbidden. According to Noble, "We are living in a United States with an open, no-holds-barred, anti-civil-rights, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ, anti-poor-policy agenda. Finding the material to support this position is just a matter of the state bending reality to fit its imperatives."
A Hopeful Future
Despite the challenges posed by digital blackface, Moody remains hopeful that the current fascination with this technology will soon be as outdated and uninviting as the analog variant. She notes that people are currently experimenting with AI technology and having a ball seeing what they can get away with, but once they move beyond this phase, they will see less of it. As she says, "Right now people are just experimenting with AI technology and having a ball seeing what they can get away with. Once we get beyond that, then we're going to see less of it. They'll move on to something else. Or they'll be up for a job, and it'll be embarrassing. Just look at the history."
