AI Counterpublics: everyday acts of gentle resistance

The film gives a voice to people who are usually excluded from decision-making processes about artificial intelligence, building a grassroots narrative that explores how AI today is a transforming laboratory, capable of reshaping the world of work, creativity, the meaning of being human, and even the landscape in which we live.

Through intimate, unspectacular stories, the documentary asks how technological development can be guided so that it reflects our real desires, needs, and visions of the future. The protagonists’ experiences offer critical insights that help steer this process more consciously, highlighting both opportunities and risks. The final message to the viewer is clear: if we want AI to truly reflect our personal and collective needs, we must act now, each in our own way.
More specifically, the documentary addresses five interconnected dimensions of AI and resistance: technological monopolization and dependency; appropriation of creative work and exploitation; algorithmic subordination and alienation; the environmental impoverishment caused by AI infrastructures; and the moral policing and the normalization of bodies and beauty standards.