When images outnumber encounters: Synthetic wilderness and ecological presence in an age of AI

Andrea Natan Feltrin

The Ecological Citizen Vol 9 No 2 2026: epub-157-1 to 9

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First published: 19 April 2026 | PERMANENT URL | DOWNLOAD CITATION IN RIS FORMAT

Abstract

A growing share of what many people now call nature is encountered through screens rather than through the slow, vulnerable and multisensory conditions that shape ecological presence in lived environments. The rise of artificially generated wildlife and landscape imagery accelerates this shift by producing scenes that resemble ecological worlds while remaining detached from any specific organism, habitat, season or behavioural ecology. Such images circulate faster and more widely than lived encounters, and their aesthetic polish risks cultivating perceptual habits increasingly shaped by representation rather than by contact with places where climate, decay, time and other-than-human agency operate as active forces rather than visual themes. This article examines the emergence of synthetic wilderness within a historical moment already marked by declining human participation in local habitats, and argues that ecological ethics cannot be grounded solely in images, regardless of their realism. Ecological belonging arises instead through shared risk, patience, uncertainty and embodied attention to organisms and processes that resist curation and control. AI-generated nature should therefore be understood as a distinct cultural product rather than as a continuation of ecological encounter, and ethical commitments to multispecies communities must prioritize lived contact with the more-than-human world, including ordinary, unsettled and discomforting forms of co-presence.

Keywords

Ecological ethics, Environmental humanities, Human supremacy, Human-nature dualism, Nature

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