AI-Z: Conversations about resistance and generative AI

Produced by Identity 2.0
Supported & Funded by BRAID

Thanks to:

Supported by the Bridging Responsible AI Divided programme with funds received from the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant number AH/X007146/1]

With thanks to Gavin Leuzzi, Pam Wallace, Beverley Hood and Miriam Walsh for their support.

Thank you to Muna Saleban for writing the transcripts from all workshops and Thandie Sibanda for proofreading this.

Organisers and Contributors
Sophia Luu, Founder of Secrets Worth Sharing (SL)
James Reeves, 4 Day Week Foundation (JR)
Issey Gladston, Founder of Sexy Climate Change (IG)
Ames, member of SWARM Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement (A)

AI Transparency Statement

Identity 2.0 did not use generative AI to:

• Write any of these words or design any of these pages
• Edit this zine for clarity, readability or style based on text already written
• Assess any gaps or make any summaries of our work

This was made with human hands so there may be human mistakes here too!

What you’ll find in this zine

• Opening letter
• Glossary
• Mapping modes of resistance
• What are your values?
• Small habit changes
• Exchanging values
• Community building
• Radical rest
• Open source
• Numbers, numbers, numbers
• Create
• Mapping our tools of resistance

Opening Letter

Hello!

As we sit here writing this from our little office, we wonder who you are. What has led you to pick up this zine and read the first page. We’re guessing, and hoping, you picked this up because you care about how generative AI is changing the world. The way it’s creeped into our devices, search engines and technologies without anyone really agreeing to it. But you’re not quite sure what to do about this? (That’s about as close as we get to a prediction model in this zine)

It’s interesting you’re reading the first page too. Some people would skip this entirely, going straight for the middle section, or even the end. Trying to get to the “heart” of it.

But the heart starts here, So hello, it’s Arda and Savena, the co-conspirators who curated this zine. We’re careful with our words because we didn’t “make” the zine. We put together most of these words and designed it, but it was truly made in conversations with four other organisers: Sophia Luu (SL), James Reeves (JR), Issey Gladston (IG) and Amy Wright (AW). Throughout the zine, we will be using their initials to indicate quotes or ideas from them, but as with all conversations, there’s often inspiration drawn from all spaces, places, and in-between moments.

Across eight hours, we mapped different modes of resistance, shared stories of failure and made some zines. The four of them arrived as poets, organisers, gardeners, artists, speakers, readers, allies, not just representatives of their respective organisations.

This zine is a reflection of those conversations, and what we learnt about resistance and how we can use those tools, rituals and frames of being to resist the creeping use of generative AI in our day-to-day lives. It is a snapshot of the moment we’re in and a reflection of the knowledge we have in this moment (SL). It began life in mid-April 2025 and wrapped up by the end of July 2025. It exists within this moment and is brought to life by you, reading this now.

The language we’ve used in this zine has been carefully considered - we don’t want to give generative AI human features and make it more than what it is (a prediction machine). We are also making an active effort to focus on generative AI, rather than vaguely referencing AI (which could refer to anything from face ID, social media feeds or cancer research techniques).

We’re thinking of this zine as a seed (SL). We’re not quite sure what is going to grow from it, but we’ve had so much fun getting to this point that we’re excited to see where it’ll go next.

Thank you!
Arda + Savena (Identity 2.0)

Glossary

The definitions were taken from a glossary created by Careful Industries December 2024 and February 2025. The definitions were written by Rachel Coldicutt with contributions from Dominique Barron. It was edited by Dominique Barron and Rachael Burton. Many of the terms included were suggested by staff at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Data Centre

Places, usually very large buildings, where the computers that power artificial intelligence systems and cloud computing are stored. These computers, known as servers, are used to run the complex computations that AI systems use to train and output information.

Data centres require large amounts of energy and water usage to operate. Clean water is used to keep data centres cool. Although many tech companies have been reluctant to disclose their water consumption, some estimates indicate that at least 1 billion litres of water are used by data centres per day and others estimate that a hyperscale data centre uses 2.1 million litres of water per day on average.

Training GPT-3 uses the equivalent amount of water as 26 UK households with a family of four, and AI water use globally is expected to reach half the UK's total water consumption.

Energy is also used in the hardware manufacturing process as well as in the storage, networking and cooling of data centres. "AI is estimated to use 10-20% of data centre electricity today, but as new generations of AI-enabled servers consume more power, this percentage is set to increase at an average of 70% in coming years and double by 2030". (Luccioni et al)

General Purpose Technologies

Also sometimes referred to as GPTs, general purpose technologies are technologies that have a wide range of applications and which could have transformative economic effects. Slightly confusingly, AI is a general purpose technology; other general purpose technologies include electricity, the Internet, cars.

Generative AI

Generative AI, or GenAI, refers to AI tools that create content including text, audio, video, images, and code. Generative AI tools analyse other data sets ("training data") to identify possible and plausible patterns and structures; they do not create new content, but echo the patterns discernible in existing sources of content. Examples of Generative AI tools include Google Gemini, Open AI's ChatGPT and DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Microsoft Co-Pilot, and Salesforce's EinsteinGPT.

GPT

GPT stands for "Generative Pre-Trained Transformer". A GPT is a kind of large language model (LLM), first developed by OpenAI. "Pre-training" means that the model has already been trained rather than having to start from scratch.

Hallucination

An hallucination is a fancy term for when a generative AI tool incorrectly guesses what might come next and either invents some content, or creates something that is almost, but not quite, right. For instance, when an AI image generator creates a picture of someone with a surprising number of thumbs, or when a text generator makes something up.

LLM / Large Language Model

"Large language models (LLMs) are deep learning algorithms that can recognize, summarize, translate, predict, and generate content using very large datasets."

Machine Learning

Machine learning is a subset of AI in which computers extrapolate statistical patterns from data sets and learn how to recreate them. It is the foundation of AI.

Mapping modes of resistance

In our second workshop, we asked everyone to map out their modes of resistance against the axis of impact versus scale. At Identity 2.0, we often remind people that these two values should be treated separately within their work, and to understand where their skills lie. We need to resist the big tech narrative of big numbers = big good.

We also recognise that impact can be hard to measure, so it was very much on an anecdotal / vibes basis.

Image: a map with two axis, the horizontal axis goes from low scale (e.g this can reach one person) to high scale (e.g. this can reach lots of people). The vertical axis goes from low impact (e.g. this could be surface level) to high impact (e.g. this can create a change).

Items on the map are the following:

• One person who engaged with my podcast shared it with her dad who is a Child Sexual Abuse survivor
• Someone emailing their MP after chatting to me
• Organising group protests for people in the community
• Got signatures on Amendment to Employment Rights Bill
• People listening to Sexy Climate Change Podcast and hopefully learning about climate action
• People liking a post I do on instagram about a specific approach
• Audience attending more sexy climate change events and learning/connecting with others in the space
• Working with a museum making a statement about Eric Gill!
• Change.org petition for Four Day Week
• Viral election meme explainer series about tactical voting
• Giving out info "goody bags" at an event
• Speaking at UNICEF & WHO

What are your values?

We make decisions every day which make up our lives. Many of us would like to think that the choices we make are ones we want to make. Often it’s out of ease, desire or because we think it’s the right thing to do.

With generative AI, it’s good to remember that we have a choice. Despite what the tech bros' stories are. We still can choose if and how we want to use these tools.

These tools are extensions of the way we want to live our lives. So, what choices and decisions are we making when we use these tools? What are the morals and ethics that dictate what food you buy, clothes you wear, and art you consume, and how do they extend to your use of generative AI tools?

If you’re a vegan, should you be considering what the environmental impact of your generative AI use is? If you like to shop locally, what does that mean if you use global data miners? Or if you fight for a library to remain open, would you want to use technologies that have mined thousands of books without the permission of writers?

The choices we make with these technologies matter! They are not neutral.

[Discussing a smaller indie bookshop considering partnering with a large landlord] The cost of doing that collaboration is so much bigger than the amount of money. Because what is your justification for saying “yes” other than “it's okay because we're not bad”? How far can you take that before you're just like into the pocket? And you’re just telling yourself that it's fine? - A

Small habit changes

But what can those choices be? Building small everyday actions is powerful! What are the smaller, low-fi things we can do to get started. (IG)

Transparency

One of the tricky things about generative AI is that we aren’t quite sure how people are using it. So, a good place to start would be transparency and public signalling (SL). We should be talking more about how it’s being used, and be public about our use of abstaining from using generative AI. This could be adding a simple line to your documents or emails, “This email did/did not use generative AI”, so people know how you’re using the tool, and can decide how they want to react to it. It also helps hold you accountable to others, whether that’s your working life or creative practice.

If you want to expand this further, you can include an AI Transparency Statement, similar to one at the beginning of this zine. This was inspired by Kester Brewin's own AI Transparency Statement in “God-like: A 500-year History of Artificial Intelligence in Myths, Machines, Monsters”

Emojis

Sophia also shared a story about using an emoji on Slack to indicate when she was on her period. Is there an anti AI emoji? Here are some of our ideas:

• 💩🤖
• ✍️
• 🤖⛔️
• 🧠 ✅
• 📝

The power of language

Language is important (JR), which is why we want to be precise when talking about AI. Throughout this zine we will be talking about Generative AI (as opposed to other systems such as image detection for facial recognition). It’s important to name the things you are fighting.

However the term Artificial Intelligence itself is a very questionable name. What is intelligence and can be quantified? Emily Bender replaced AI with ‘maths maths’, ‘matrix multiplication’ or ‘magic 8-ball’ in conversations and the ridiculousness revealed itself. What else can we call this prediction machine?

The power of labels is important for yourself too - the luddite movement is back in full force thanks to the work of writers like Brian Merchant. Start claiming and owning that label, that shows that we’re fighting for workers rights. So why not make your own “made by human” label?

Be Rude

Would you label yourself as rude? Maybe not to humans, but the idea of being rude ‘to an LLM’ isn’t real. Don’t humanise your interactions with LLMs by saying please and thank you. Stop treating them with the kindness that a human deserves. Moreso, if you send a separate message with “goodbye” or “thank you” you’re potentially using an extra bottle of water (500ml) to keep their server cool for it to process that message.

Better yet being rude can mean avoiding generative search AI. Swearing in your google search means it won’t shove a generative AI answer at the top of your search. Looking at alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo are also another way to avoid the use of generative search results.

Celebrating small wins too (A)

Take a step back and celebrate what you’ve done too! Tell others and find small rituals to recognise the work you’re doing, no matter how small.

Exchanging values

… in contrast to the extractive hidden labour behind AI

As we live in a capitalist society, shifting power often means shifting value from one place to another. And this is complicated.

“Within sex work, so much of the money flowing in is from problematic people…so my opinion on that is very different because it's like individuals making a living with each other.” - A

Your money

The most obvious way is in monetary value, and there are ways you can use your cash to resist the rise of generative AI.

The first being donating to charities and organisations fighting this in the UK:

• Foxglove Legal fights legal court cases for data labellers.
• Signal is a privacy-first messaging app that won’t have an AI Bot pushed into its interface.

Buy independent zines from alternative tech media like Cursor Mag, Container Mag or Logic Mag. Or look at publishers like Punching Up Press, Verso or Pluto Press.

Mutual aid is a tactic used by many, from funding sex workers to sending funds for people to travel to abortion clinics (AW). Could you start an anti‑generative AI mutual‑aid fund to support creators hurt by AI? All you need is a PayPal account to collect and distribute funds. Maybe you know a group of creative people who can offer incentives for those donating £10 or more, such as an hour's chat or a digital game on itch.io.

Beyond that, pensions have been a recent focus for climate change activities, asking people to diversify their pension funds from funding oil and gas companies. Could we do the same for tech companies? Investigate where your pension is going and make sure you aren’t funding Tesla, Meta or Nvidia.

Skills swap

Beyond financial value, there is also value in your time and attention. And the importance of valuing other people’s time. So if you want to learn more about someone's work, but can’t offer to pay them, can you swap skills instead (SL + IG)?

“It's so easy when you have such limited resources to be like, “Well, everyone's gonna do this for free, and that's and that's gonna be great”.... [so] you massively gatekeep who can give their time for free and you contribute to a sector…where a majority of the hard work, the graft, the lived experience, the stories, are built on this kind of motion of unpaid labour. And then that gets built into budgets, then that gets built into policies.” - SL

Volunteer

If you are in a financial position where you’re able to volunteer, look at movements and spaces you can volunteer with! Or volunteer to write a new policy for a community or host conversations about using generative AI in spaces you’re part of.

Zine extract from JR
I’m the child of a single mum.
Being raised by a woman helps to see the world differently, son

I read The Sun growing up ...
Now i’m grown, i’m unlearning its dross
F*CK MURDOCH
Stories have a cost

The world changes through relationships and conversation
When money talks the loudest
PEOPLE DIE

Art asks questions from the heart
WE ALL NEED TO DANCE

BUT THE WILLS OF MEN
SHAKE HANDS
NOT LEGS

The race to a sugar coated oblivion
leaves us to catch flights and feelings just for respite

Despite that,
I still think
change is possible
TOGETHER

Community Building

“Resistance to anything has to start from a point of connection and relationship building,” - JR

Any meaningful changes arise when we work together. That is something that came up time and time again. So, what are the ways we can come together to combat generative AI?

Keep it local

The worrying thing about the rollout of generative AI has been how it’s seeped into every part of our lives, seemingly overnight. It’s now in our nurseries, book clubs, local supermarkets and transport links.

We don't need new groups to talk about this with. We should be looking towards the communities we are already part of to expand them into this space. We should be looking at groups around us and reach out, because we never know where those connections might lead (JR). Could you form a parent group at your school to discuss generative AI’s impact on your child’s experience? Or maybe chat with your local library about ways they want to protect literature?

Unions

Unions are a great example of collective action, too. The United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW) is working hard to protect workers' rights for those who work in technology. Beyond that, joining a union to push back on your workplace generative AI policies is also a great place to start. There is also ‘The Creative Rights in AI Coalition’, which is building momentum.

Make it social

“[I knew] that my friends were going to those protests and I wanted to hang out with them and do something fun. So that was my, like, initial reason for going” (IG)

When thinking about groups of people - protests are a typical place to start when it comes to social change. But what does that look like for generative AI. Well, generative AI doesn't live in the sky - it’s hosted in physical rooms called data centres. We are seeing a huge expansion in these data centres, growing across the UK green space in order to make more infrastructure for generative AI.

Find out if there are any proposals near you - look at local news sources or event local newsletters as they pop up! Join a local action group to protest or reach out to these communities to find out how you can support their fight. Make a whatsapp group and tell people what you’re going to (IG).

Food

And a key to any great community? SHARING FOOD (IG, SL, JR, AW)

Everyone listens to you when you have free food. It’s just a fact of life.
So arm up. Bring snacks.

Zine extract from IG
In an increasingly digitised + separated world, people are craving irl connection + community

Radical rest

“Rest as a form of resistance is really key. Because you can't be an active campaigner if you're overworked and stressed” - JR

The driving narratives of society push us to think of being productive as humans. We are here to squeeze the most out of our time for…what exactly?

“The reason [so many of us ] are using these softwares is because we’re told to be more productive. So what does productivity lead to? Why are we pushing for productivity? What do we believe this growth will give us?” - IG

Rest is radical in a society pushing us for productivity and efficiency.

We don’t have to give in to the narrative of maximizing our time, grind culture and side hustles. As if we were only on this earth to provide profit. Generative AI is a tool being pushed to us to make us more “productive”. But the reality is that we are just people. We have to eat, sleep and dance (JR + SL). So taking a pause can feel radical in this world.

What can rest look like?

• If you are struggling to quit these tools, maybe consider having a limit? Maybe have Gen AI free days, or set limits for how many times you will use it a day/week.
• If you are off the tools all together, try just a screen free walk. Leave your phone at home, go for a walk and reset.
• Reading fiction!!! Imagine if more tech leaders read fiction that wasn’t just sci-fi and learnt about… empathy??

Open Sourcing

“I share my garden space with 5 other friends, and we grow food together. We are forming closer bonds and supporting each other emotionally. A good model for how we can share resources!" - A

What does it look like to share our resources and tools to help one another grow and flourish?

Make a zine

This is our attempt. We’re sharing the knowledge we gained across the workshops. Maybe you can post this zine to someone? Or photocopy it and distribute it yourself?

Sharing resources

Sharing resources is also a form of open-sourcing!

For generative AI, there are alternatives which have open-source at the centre, like the Hugging Face repository. Or consider making a low-tech local AI, such as AIxDesign's work around SlowAI. Some of these are even working on models in which artists consent to their work being used, rather than it being scraped without their permission or knowledge.

How can we find a digital common ground to share and grow things together? What knowledge and resources can you share?

Alternative tech

We can also share resources and think about alternatives. Because we don’t need to rely on large tech companies, which are choosing to flood our technologies with generative AI.

• Linux as an alternative to Microsoft
• LibreOffice is the alternative to Microsoft Office Suite
• Mango Languages as a Duolingo alternative
• Booshop.org instead of Amazon for buying books
• Ghost or Button down as an alternative newsletter platform
• Signal instead of WhatsApp
• Proton Mail or Mailfence instead of Gmail

Beyond software, we can think about alternative infrastructure, too. We love the low-tech magazine (solar.lowtechmagazine.com), a solar-powered website that is only online when there’s enough sun.

Quote Page:
“The role of the artists is to make the revolution irresistible” - Toni Cade Bambara

“NUMBER NUMBERS NUMBERS” -

A title taken from a post-note made when discussing what we need to see more of.

It was written because we need more people involved in this fight. Whether they want to call themselves activists, changemakers or simply people who are just a bit pissed off.

Because calling yourself or someone an “activist” doesn’t sit right sometimes. Sometimes we’re putting them on a pedestal (IG), and everyone should look up to them. But the reality is that we all make changes all the time. That’s all it means to be an activist.

Just by having a conversation, you can make a change. Because that’s all the research we did for this - we just had a series of chats to arrive at some commonalities and shared values. And you have no idea what effect it will have on someone, and the way it can shape the decisions they take.

It was so sweet that, like, she thought [my] podcast was even a ripple of a part of that story. - S

How do you have a conversation with someone about generative AI?

1. Ask if they use it - and if so, how?
2. Ask them why
3. Point to alternatives - remind them of what we used to make
4. Make a bit of a plan to hold each other to account - make a challenge

Common questions

But it’s just so much easier to use generative AI?

Is it easier, or is it just saving you a couple of minutes? The reality is that all the information in a generative model is scraped from the internet somewhere. It is just a prediction model. Guessing what the most likely word/image should be.

We have been doing things without generative AI for many many years. Why are we letting this technology convince us that we suddenly can’t write emails, or come up with ideas for lessons or talk to our friends.

Those five minutes you saved? Not worth it.

I find generative AI helps me with school/work!

These large language models are more concerned with sounding accurate than being accurate. They have no accountability and simply lie all the time. You might have heard the term "hallucinate", which basically means that AI makes things up all the time to sound right.

You know that person who is constantly trying to one up you? They have been to a better beach, or buy a more ethical tote bag or know a bigger comedian. An AI wants to prove to you that it knows it’s shit. It would rather lie than admit it cannot generate something useful.

But AI is the future! It’s inevitable!

Is it? Or is it the story people who will make a lot of money from AI are telling you. They want you to buy into it because they want people to buy it.

It makes me more creative, it’s just another tool!

But isn’t creativity a bit random sometimes? Generative AI can’t surprise you with new ideas. There are 1000s of books in the world, but the one you write will be different because you wrote it.

It’s fun to use generative AI.

Maybe rethink what fun is. The fun in writing is figuring out the words to use from my brain. The joy in communicating is knowing that a human is trying to tell me something. Why do I want to let an algorithm take this away from me? The process is the party. It’s where I learn who I am and meet myself.

But generative AI makes things sound smarter/better/more formal/suit the format it’s meant to be in

Wouldn’t it be a more interesting world if we just met people how we are? If we didn’t have to make something more formal and just accepted the way we wanted to be?

Send the bullet points! Send the prompts! They are a lot more interesting than whatever is spat out at the end.

Hold people to account!

There are a lot of hard conversations we have to have in life. But turns out, most of them are bad because of all the anxiety you feel beforehand. Having a tough conversation with a loved one is going to be so much more impactful than another LinkedIn thought piece.

Meet people with their energy - SL

You are not a wizard. You can’t change everyone and everything. Know your limits and theirs.

Zine extract from SL:
Image of 4 quadrants, each section reads; ‘An invisible labourer’, ‘a vibrant smiler’, ‘her own biggest cheerleader & critic’, ‘third generation matriarch’

Quotes

“Public imagination as resistance” - IG

“Joyful Militancy” - IG

“serious joy” - SL

“I did a poem at a festival once and someone came and gave me a Polaroid as a thank you, *everyone smiles*. and that was a lovely moment for me”- JR

“The erotics of resistance refers to how it can give pleasure and be a joyful source” - A

“joy is fuel for the revolution” - AW

Every act of resistance has to come out of a space to create a space that betters us all. And it feels like bleak and heavy work. But joy can be at the heart of so much of our work, found within the connections we have with one another and the things we can make solo or together (AW).

CREATE

Creativity and art make us think about ideas in new ways. Maybe it makes you lead with your feelings or reflect on the journey you’ve taken to reach this place.

Displaying human-made creativity is proof of the unnecessariness of generative AI for creativity. By creating, you are putting something into the world that AI could never make, because no machine can ever have all your thoughts and feelings.

By sharing your human-made work, you can also prompt conversations in new ways and allow people to feel differently about the topic, too. Not sure where to start?

1. Make your own zine about the ways you are resisting generative AI
2. Make memes
3. Make a poster promoting human activity and thought
4. Design your own pro-human stickers
5. Make a banner or flag (and take it to your next festival, protest, community lunch, or party)

Protecting your work

This is an area a lot of artists are working on, to varying degrees of success. Policy is changing and new data hoovers are being invented. Here are a few ways we’ve come across to protect your work online:

Masking

Add a digital mask to your digital asset. These make very small changes to a digital image that we can’t see, so if they are scraped online, machine-learning models won’t be able to understand what they are.

Glaze, Mist and Anti-DreamBooth are more technical tools too.

Consider what tools you’re using

Opt out of Adobe’s AI settings. Flickr is also being scrapped to consider if there is an alternative space to share your work.

Pollute the data

Nightshade is an application that may protect your art from DALL-E and similar graphical Gen AI plagues: https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html. Taking it a step further than masking, these not only alter the digital assets, making it hard for AI models to interpret images, but they can also break these models by making them unpredictable.

Other resources:

This zine is just a culmination of things we know. Which is a culmination of things other people know. Here are a few places we’ve learnt from:

• Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown
• 404 media
• Brian Merchant’s blog and book - Blood In The Machine
• Tech Won’t Save Us Podcast by Paris Marx
• Empire of AI by Karen Ho
• The AI Con by Emily M bender and Alex Hanna

Zine extract from A:
Repair after a rupture can have huge impacts on resistance movements

- by fostering joy, reciprocity and pleasure, we can increase our capacity to repair with our comrades

Mapping tools of resistance

This is just the starting point! We’ve shared some of our ideas for resisting generative AI, and on the next page you’ll see it mapped out against similar axes from the beginning.

Just as we asked others to map their methods of resistance, we have done the same.

If you have a pen, feel free to add your own!

Image: a map with two axis, the horizontal axis goes from low effort (e.g this is easy for you to do) to high effort (e.g. this can create a change for you & others). The vertical axis goes from low impact (e.g. this would only impact you ) to high impact (e.g. this can create a change for you & others).

Items on the map are the following:

• Adding an AI transparency statement in emails/docs
• Using anti-AI emojis
• Making a ‘made by a human’ label
• Set up a mutual aid group for workers affected by genAI
• Join a union
• Change your pensions
• Swearing in your google searches to prevent genAI responses
• Not sending an extra ‘thank you’ message to a genAI bot
• Not using genAI tools for a day/week/month
• Donating to alternative tech tools
• Using alternative tech tools
• Protest data centers
• Having conversations about genAI in your communities
• Make something creative
• Share this zine with someone
• Read more about this topic

[End pages]

Whatever you choose to do, big or small, remember that you have an important part to play. It's okay to feel overwhelmed or want to give up. But you are not alone.

If you ever want to chat, share ideas or let us know your modes of resistance then get in touch! Let’s keep sharing ideas and tactics to create a just digital future

info@identity20.org
@identity2_0