Emilie K. Sunde

Dr Emilie K. Sunde is Assistant Professor at the Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life. Emilie’s research examines how generative technologies are reshaping culture by connecting the technical workings of AI models to how people experience their output. Currently, she is interested in how latent spaces function as generative spaces within cultural production, and how these technologies are both products and producers of culture. This involves asking how AI models learn, what it means to say a model is trained on “the internet”, how human design choices shape what they generate, and how we can understand AI-made culture beyond the narratives pushed by the AI industry.  Emilie holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, funded by the Australian Research Council. Her thesis, “Computational Reproduction: From Photographs to Datagraphs”, critically examined the tensions between the experience of AI images and their technical architecture. Emilie is also the co-founder of CODED AESTHETICS, a research group exploring sensing and sense-making within human-machine coproduction. Recent publications include the edited volume Decentring Ethics: AI Art as Method (2025), which explores how artistic methods can be used to identify and interrogate novel, ethical ways to engage with AI models, as well as articles and special issues in The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, Media Theory, Philosophy of Photography, and more. You can read more about her work at emilie.ai and coded-aesthetics.org.