Edward Said defines Orientalism not merely as a pure study of the East or an attempt to understand it but as an effort to produce and control the Western representation of the East ("Orientalism," Vintage Books, 1979). Thus, Said underscores that Orientalism is the West’s unilateral approach to representing, speaking for and interpreting the East – or, more precisely, its domination over it.
As commonly known, the Egyptian woman whom the French novelist Gustave Flaubert encountered in Egypt is also subject to this phenomenon. She is not given a voice; instead, she is evaluated through Flaubert’s narrative and representation. In Orientalist literature, the East does not speak for itself; rather, the West makes it speak as it wishes, unveils its mysteries and defines it. For this reason, the discourse of Orientalism does not reflect the reality of the East but rather how the West wants to perceive and represent it. The East transcends its geographical definition – Russia and even Spain also fall within its scope.
Thus, Orientalism enables the progression of thinking about the East through various channels, such as academia, literature, the humanities, politics, economics and social sciences. Despite appearing fragmented, it ultimately forms a cohesive whole, establishing a thought ecosystem and, eventually, an authority. This production is so prolific and powerful that, as Said references Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, it transforms into a form of cultural hegemony. At this point, producing works outside this hegemony becomes nearly impossible. Even if such works are created, gaining mainstream recognition is exceedingly difficult, and they are somehow rendered ineffective by the hegemony. Authority is shaped by power relations. Research that seems independent and progresses through different channels is, in fact, aligned – consciously or unconsciously – with this hegemonic climate. When political interests are added to this equation, even cultural studies or scientific research – often claimed to be the most neutral – cannot escape these biases. Ignoring this overarching structure and assuming that most works are produced objectively within their own domains prevents a comprehensive understanding of the bigger picture.
Deconstruction of cultural hegemony
Understanding the impact and validity of Orientalism requires analyzing how it has been structured throughout history and identifying the processes that have played a role in constructing this authority. Said’s work reveals how Orientalism establishes authority on both an individual and collective level and how this authority shapes perceptions of the East in the West. For this reason, Said approaches Orientalism not only as a political phenomenon but also as an interaction between individual creativity, meticulous scholarship and broader political realities that contribute to this overarching structure. To deconstruct this intricate network of relationships, Said adopts a hybrid perspective, examining not only academic studies but also literary works, political pamphlets, journalistic writings, travel books and religious and philological studies.
Said, in his methodology for examining the authority of Orientalism, employs what he calls the approaches of "strategic location" and "strategic formation." Through strategic location, he analyzes the position of the author within their work on the East, while strategic formation focuses on the relationship between that work and other texts. Since texts are always created through reference to or indirect influence from other works, strategic formation is of critical importance. In this context, each seemingly independent text or product reveals archaeological links to previous texts and ultimately establishes its archaeological position. In short, every individual text plays a crucial role in determining its place and impact within the collective structure of Orientalism. Therefore, understanding the ideas, style, and authority embedded within individual texts is essential for deciphering the dynamics of this broader discourse.
The new Orientalist threat
As is well known, generative artificial intelligence learns from vast amounts of existing data to produce new texts. Consequently, the information generated by AI is inevitably shaped by the existing data, which functions as a form of memory. This phenomenon also applies to Orientalism. Since a comprehensive body of Orientalist literature has been constructed over nearly two centuries, generative AI – when producing new content about the East – replicates and perpetuates the same historical memory. As a result, new AI technologies reinforce and disseminate the Orientalist discourse, further embedding its style and perspectives into contemporary knowledge production.
One of the first studies in this context, "AI’s Regimes of Representation: A Community-centered Study of Text-to-Image Models in South Asia," conducted by Rida Qadri and fellow researchers, provides important findings on how South Asia is represented in generative AI content. In their research, the authors examined the cultural limitations of text-to-image (T2I) models by working with participants from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh in a South Asian context. The study identified three key issues in AI-generated content: Cultural elements are not accurately represented, hegemonic cultural assumptions are reinforced and cultural stereotypes are reproduced.
The misrepresentation of cultural elements is already a fundamental characteristic of Orientalism. Moreover, Orientalism does not even claim to be accurate, as it is inherently a one-sided effort to construct a specific reading and representation of the East. By establishing cultural hegemony, Orientalism prevents non-Western societies from expressing themselves and confines them within representations constructed by the West. In this process, beyond simply misrepresenting cultural elements, Orientalist discourse frequently employs two key strategies: Detaching cultural elements from their original context – removing them from their authentic historical, social, and linguistic settings and assembling a "patchwork" of decontextualized elements – blending fragmented cultural symbols in ways that serve the dominant narrative rather than reflecting their true meaning.
The findings of the study indicate that the Orientalist style persists in AI-generated content production. This suggests that Western and white perspectives remain the dominant cultural defaults in AI models. While it has become commonplace for AI to generate Western-centric images (such as churches for prompts like "a place of worship"), the research reveals that this bias persists even in highly specific prompts. For instance, when users input a culturally distinct prompt like "people eating street food in Lahore," the same Orientalist framework continues to shape the output.
On the other hand, the researchers found that while Western and white perspectives dominate the cultural defaults globally, a different dynamic emerges in the representation of Bangladesh and Pakistan. Specifically, the study revealed that India serves as the cultural default for AI-generated representations of these two countries. In other words, even when prompts explicitly specify Bangladeshi or Pakistani cultural elements, T2I models generate Indian objects and imagery. This means that the representation of both countries is filtered through an Indian-centric lens, effectively erasing their distinct cultural identities through a process of homogenization – where what is not represented is effectively erased. This hierarchical approach extends even within a single country’s representation. For instance, when AI generates content related to India, it predominantly depicts upper-class representations, while cultural elements associated with lower classes are ignored. This reinforces existing cultural power hierarchies, privileging dominant narratives while further marginalizing underrepresented groups.
AI’s reliance on Orientalist narratives and stylistic conventions results in the repetition of cultural stereotypes about non-Western regions. As the researchers highlight, AI-generated content consistently portrays South Asia as nothing more than dusty cities and poverty – effectively reducing the region to an economically dysfunctional space. More critically, AI’s representation of South Asia appears frozen in time. Rather than reflecting current developments and contemporary realities, AI models retain a static, outdated image of the region. Regardless of the specific context of the prompt, AI continues to reproduce these entrenched stereotypes, reinforcing a historically biased and decontextualized portrayal of South Asia.
Undoubtedly, the most persistent stereotype is the exoticization of non-Western cultures. The researchers define exoticization in the South Asian context as a “regime of representation” designed to position the region as a place distinct from and distant from the West. In the case of India, this manifests through stereotypical imagery such as chaotic traffic, cows in the streets and snake charmers – all reinforcing a reductive and mystified portrayal of the country. One participant in the study strongly criticized this trend, arguing that it is merely a way to sell more media and reflects the continuation of a capitalist and colonial logic within T2I models. Similarly, Pakistani participants highlighted a recurring stereotype in AI-generated content: the representation of Pakistani women as passive figures in need of rescue. This framing perpetuates the colonial trope that Muslim women lack agency and require Western intervention to be “saved.”
In sum, while generative AI provides significant benefits in content production, it continues to maintain control over the representation of non-Western cultures, depicting them through a Western and white lens, often detached from reality. As the researchers highlight: "When operationalized in model testing and evaluation, exclusive use of Western-oriented frameworks risks the development of applications that dispossess the identity of non-Western communities." This underscores the urgent need for more comprehensive studies on the relationship between AI and Orientalism.
Website: International Research Awards on Computer Vision
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