Black user responses to Black style performances in generative AI outputs dataset

Abstract

This dataset contains video transcripts, metadata, images and user comments from a sample of TikTok videos. Dataset consists of .png and .jpeg image files and .csv files. This dataset accompanies a submitted article about Black user responses to Black style performances in generative AI outputs. Novel audio-visual capacities have made explicit the performances of identity and ethnicity that are endemic to online existence, whether implicit — as with assumptions of whiteness being linguistically unmarked, or in deliberate performances of Blackness — through raciolinguistic associations of speech styles, and the production of phenotypical audio-visual markers of race by Generative AI technologies. GenAI’s new audiovisual offerings have expanded access to and commercialisation of Black cultural identity. In this paper we introduce a spectrum of Black responses to AI incursions into identity performance; from adoption — as with adopting kin, but also as tool uptake; to skepticism — engaging whilst critiquing and adapting technology to Black liberatory purpose; to refusal — the rejection of AI's exploitation and lack of verisimilitude in performances of Blackness sans Black embodiment.