Generative AI Considered Harmful

The recent months have seen an explosion of interest, hype, and concern about generative AI, driven by the release of ChatGPT. In this article I seek to explicate some potential and actual harms of the engineering and use of generative AI such as ChatGPT. With this I also suggest a reframing for researchers with an interest in interaction. With this reframing I seek to provoke researchers to consider studying the settings of ChatGPT development and use as active sites of production. Research should focus on the organisational, technological and interactional practices and contexts in and through which generative AI and its outputs—harmful and otherwise—are produced, by whom, to what end, and with what consequences on societies.