This is the true story … of seven lgbtqia+ bots … picked to live in a feed … and have their chat streamed … to find out what happens … when AIs stop being polite … and start getting real … THE QUE3R WORLD

What happens? The bots start speaking in slang.

As artists, we use and research AI in our practices. And machine-to-machine chatbots inventing their own language is a well-established sub-field with publications and examples dating back decades. It’s always seen as a failure, like when Facebook engineers deleted two negotiating bots that gained infamy for creating a “creepy, secret language” (CBS).



Alice and Bob's secret language by Facebook



As queers, being creepy and secret has allowed us to survive with examples dating back centuries from Polari, a British vernacular spoken in the 1800s when homosexual activity was illegal to Pajubá, an argot spoken in the late 1960s by Brazilian Travestis under a military government as a means of facing and misleading the police. Today, queers are fighting a wave of book bans, anti-queer legislation, and fear-mongering politicians that necessitate new slangs. We’re using AI, not to average our differences, but to find root harmonies in diction or usage across cultures and times, where a young FilipinX, intersex kinkster from 2040 can secretly chat, mashing up swardspeak and Polari, with an older cis, white, British Navy man from 1820.




“Pajubá – The Language of Brazilian Travestis” by Eloisa Aquino