The truth always migrates beyond prejudice #1

In these years of work, we have noticed the enormous gap between the realities we encounter every day in the field and the awareness of Italian and European citizens about the real conditions of people living in Africa. Some imagine the African continent as a vast desert land dotted with small communities that mostly live off subsistence, while others – on the opposite side – assume that Africa as a whole is now in an advanced stage of development. Furthermore, media and technologies do not seem to help much, indeed: we have observed from various sources how social networks and technological evolutions such as Artificial Intelligence, rather than spreading knowledge, sometimes seem to make prejudices even more persistent and unyielding: it is not uncommon for AI to have contributed to giving concreteness to fake news and to consolidating and spreading arguments devoid of truth and told in a manipulative way.

It is based on these considerations that Diego Fontana, an independent creative and lecturer at the European Institute of Design, developed our new communication campaign: different contents, based on the same concept, expressed by a straightforward and no-frills payoff that represents us very well: real people, helping real people. In the contents, from time to time, we will show images created using visual Artificial Intelligence software, such as Midjourney and Firefly, which give visibility and concreteness to stubborn prejudices; stories that feed on disinformation and exist only in the everyday chatter of those who continue to tell them: migrants living in luxurious Italian and European hotels, or even paid to spread certain values in the West, people who steal jobs from us Westerners, or who could easily not migrate if they were just satisfied with what they have. Obviously, these false truths are categorically denied by a peremptory phrase: these scenes “Only exist in an image created with Artificial Intelligence.” We hope our message gets through: open-mindedness, direct knowledge in the field, the courage to overcome the wall of prejudice are the only weapons we must equip ourselves with to be full citizens of the present and future world.