Marginalized Code: Feminist Interventions in AI Art

Abstract

What does it mean to critically engage with the AI art through a feminist lens – and how can such engagement help reveal and resist the power structures encoded in its systems? This paper argues that AI systems are not only a cultural product but also a symptom of broader sociotechnical infrastructures marked by gendered exclusion, epistemic injustice, and hidden labor. The central thesis is that feminist critique is essential to unpacking how AI systems reproduce marginalization under the guise of objectivity and innovation. Drawing on feminist scholarship and critical media history, the paper situates the AI art within a broader lineage of feminist engagement with technology, from cyberfeminist net art to contemporary AI art, and within the emerging scholarly discourse on feminist AI. Methodologically, it combines historical analysis, theoretical synthesis, and qualitative case study interpretation. The analysis frames selected feminist AI artworks through both media-historical context and the perspectives articulated by the artists themselves. Through the analysis of selected feminist AI artworks, it demonstrates how these practices challenge dominant narratives of neutrality and progress. Rather than seeking inclusion within flawed systems, the feminist AI art reimagines technological infrastructures around care, accountability, and alternative ways of knowing. These interventions resist the abstraction and erasure that characterize much of mainstream AI, offering epistemological and aesthetic strategies that confront and reconfigure power relations in digital culture.