About the installation

Montréal premiere

In the interactive media series I’M NOT A ROBOT (2021), Cadie Desbiens‑Desmeules critiques how internet users unintentionally fuel AI development through unpaid digital labor. With the modern maxim, “If something is free, ‘you’ are the product,” the work shines a light on low-paying microtask platforms, where half of crowdworkers earn under $2/hour, while tech giants reap enormous profits.

Desbiens‑Desmeules focuses on tasks like reCAPTCHA, which force users to repeatedly identify images or decipher text. Although these seem harmless, they covertly train AI and digitize massive archives, everything from The New York Times to Google Street View, for free, generating billions in value. Google alone has amassed approximately $7.3 billion worth of free labor through reCAPTCHA.

Her work turns this exploitation on its head by feeding thousands of cat images into an AI model generating cars, producing hybrid “cat-cars”: absurd visuals that challenge the system’s logic. The installation features interactive screens mimicking CAPTCHA, inviting viewers into an endless loop of labeling continuously training AI with no reward or end.

This tongue-in-cheek experiment using images generated with adversarial network (GAN) exposes the hidden labor of our digital lives, raising ethical questions about consent, compensation, and the invisible human toil shaping modern AI.

Technique
Generative adversarial network (GAN) and javascript.

About the artist

Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules^QC/PT is a French Canadian artist working between generative art, conceptualism and artificial intelligence. Her practice is either site-specific or installation-based, spanning immersive environments and augmented reality. Drawing on her background experience as a journalist, she casts a critical eye over technological trends with artworks that provokes thoughts and internal discussions around how we intertwine with technology.

I’M NOT A ROBOT by Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules

MUTEK remercie le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec de son appui financier.