"Remember, love knows no boundaries and comes in many forms": The conceptualization of queerness within AI-generated fan works

Abstract

Using the fandoms of Harry Potter, Supernatural (2005–2020), and Our Flag Means Death (2022–2023), we interrogate the sociotechnical system that underpins generative AI and potential biases toward queerness embedded in them. Given its historical ties to addressing cultural inequities, especially around queerness, fan fiction offers a critical space to examine the sociotechnical underpinnings of generative AI in producing fiction and as an extension of naming and making visible embodied identities. Through an exploration of how ChatGPT fabricates queer fan fiction, we identify not only the typologies of visible queerness imagined as possible within generative AI but equally what essentialist and normative ideologies remain rooted within technologies.