Robots and Code: A Case Study of the Depiction of Artificial Intelligence in German News Media

Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications, such as large language models and generative AI, have become some of the most hotly debated technologies of our time. While they are often seen as harbingers of progress, they also evoke fear and uncertainty regarding their potential societal impacts. Mass media, especially journalism, play a pivotal role in shaping public opinion on these technologies. In democratic societies, journalism is tasked with educating and informing the public, contributing to collective understanding and opinion formation. Brause et al. state that “media coverage of Al technologies is an important indicator of the central issues, actors, frames and evaluations attached to technology, and a critical arena where stakeholders negotiate future pathways for Al and its role in societies” (277). However, how key technologies like AI are visually represented in editorial media remains an underexplored topic in current research. Which photos and/or illustrations are used to accompany news articles about this technology and its impact on society? This is of high importance to the overall understanding of the media representation of AI—a question at the intersection of visual studies, cultural studies, and communication studies. Previous research has shown that how new technologies are depicted (and not only how they are described) can significantly shape public discourse at multiple levels (Zeller et al.; Kelly). For instance, studies of nanotechnology, a topic whose societal debate parallels some aspects of the current discourse about AI, reveal that media stories about these debates are often illustrated with rather stereotypical elements. Lösch notes that they are “frequently illustrated in mass media publications with futuristic science-fiction images” (255). This trend—depicting real technologies and their (as yet uncertain) societal consequences using visual tropes from science fiction, such as robots, androids, code, and futuristic models—can also be observed in recent discussions around AI, particularly in journalistic descriptions of the potential dangers posed by AI systems to society and humanity. This article aims to examine how selected articles from German quality media (a definition of the term can be found in Meier and in Arnold), published between January and September 2024, visually illustrate the topic of “AI risks and dangers”. Rather than analysing the content of these articles, the focus will be on thei