Automated Empathy refers to AI models that code and mimic our emotions based on, among other signs, our facial expressions.  We humans understand emotions imperfectly; they are messy, complex and ambiguous.  In coding them, AI replaces ambiguity with an illusion of certainty.  

This series expresses my resistance to Automated Empathy, contrasting the imperfection of the handmade with the seemingly perfect, but ultimately unfathomable, digital.  Each image starts with digital self-portrait where I act out an emotion.  I stitch into a print of the image to cover that emotion and add a ‘net’ of threads mimicking how AI might read the face.  Glass beads add a reference to tech’s screens, lenses and optic fibre.