[28] MANUFACTURING THE ANIMAL: AI-GENERATED ANIMAL REELS, THE DIGITAL HUMANIMAL, AND THE POLITICS OF HUMAN–ANIMAL BOUNDARIES IN THE DIGITAL AGE
How to Cite : Rakeshwar Sarkar, Mounika. C & K. Vijayakumar (2026). Manufacturing the Animal: AI-Generated Animal Reels, the Digital Humanimal, and the Politics of Human–Animal Boundaries in the Digital Age. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research & Reviews, 5(8),321-332. https://doi.org/10.56815/ijmrr.v5i8.2026.321-332
Abstract
As AI generated short-form digital media spreads, it has revolutionized the ways in which production and circulation happen. Amongst new synthetic video forms are the AIproduced animal reels, which "show" cats and dogs, elephants and monkeys, bears and rabbits, and other non-human animals speaking working dining in restaurants traveling fighting, establishing families, participating in human social institutions, or engaging in other human terms of activity. While these types of short-form videos are popular as humorous jokes, they simultaneously present pressing challenges related to the cultural construction of the animal as other, as well as the ways in which anthropocentrism persists in technologically mediated environments. This paper explores these challenges by drawing upon the theoretical perspectives of posthumanism, critical animal studies, and Michel Foucault's notion of normalization and power; it argues that AI animal reels both place the human and the animal in continual tension and transform the human more into the animal. While on one side, anthropomorphic visualizations destabilize the humananimal divide by rendering non-human animals emotional linguistic dressed up, socially identifiable, and agentic; simultaneously, by turning animals into humanlike agents, AI animals may reproduce anthropocentrism when the animal is only found to be culturally valuable when it resembles the human. The paper then introduces the notion of the digital humanimal, a digital wildlife hybrid created by AI & shared online, whose animal body is humanised through language, cognition and affect, but remains at the same time visibly sonically Avely animal. The paper also develops the notion of 'algorithmic non-normality' on the digital animal, delineating how AI images of animal body, mind and emotion construct, overstate and circulate new modes of differentiating normal from abnormal animal behaviour. Lastly, the paper concludes that power is exercised on many levels: humans craft the prompts & narratives, machines 'produce' the images, platforms police accessibility and audiences produce circulation. Digital animal reels because of this become a site of new cultural import, in which the interplay of human animal machine, normal & artificial categories is negotiated.
