How to See Like a Machine : Images After AI

Author: Trevor Paglen

Photographic reportage

Published on 19 May 2026 by Verso Books in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 192 pages, 55 integrated images
210 x 140 | 300g

Today our world is under the watchful and tireless eye of computer vision, with cam­eras and monitors tracing our every move. Furthermore, generative AI is now able to render a synthetic world indistinguishable from reality for us to explore. Trevor Paglen goes in search of the ways and means of understanding this new visual universe. Instead of asking what these technologies 'say' about the world, he teaches us to ask what they 'do' and where such images come from.

Exploring the esoteric worlds of psyops, UFO imagery, magicians, and public relation gurus, Paglen shows that this appar­ently alien realm is more human, but much stranger, than we imagine.