Using Generative Artificial Intelligence Images as a Qualitative Method to Research Aging-Technology Futures

This article demonstrates how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) produces incomplete and relational images, directing our attention and senses to imagine what has been and may become. I argue that qualitative researchers can use GenAI images to investigate futures and foreground participants’ priorities and values. This approach allows participants and researchers to move with images and immerse themselves in possible futures. I show this methodological possibility, positioning this discussion in visual and futures anthropology and drawing on my future ethnographic fieldwork focused on Aging-Technology futures. In this fieldwork, I used GenAI images reproducing undesired scenarios during video-ethnographic household visits with older adults.