Machines encoded with artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly having influence in human social realms. Rapid technological advances have propelled encounters between humans and embodied AI humanoids from a subject of science fiction to a real-world phenomenon. Thus, their embodiments are socially and culturally significant and pertinent for feminist investigation. In this thesis, I employ reflexive thematic analysis and a feminist theoretical perspective focused on affect and emotion to examine human and machine relationships in the context of gender, power, and society. The topic is explored using three different case studies that all focus on interactions between humans and feminised AI humanoids. The analysis shows that gender is a crucial factor in the humanisation of the AI embodiment. By playing on the idea that machines transcend their machinic status through designated purposes, creators appeal to ambivalence in human and machine encounters. As interactive AI and social robots continue to integrate into human social contexts, it is important to consider the underlying structures and social implications of their production and representation.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:15:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 COS - Marcio Wariss Monteiro.pdf: 532677 bytes, checksum: 1954c75ed9e49be322c31dc87cff8362 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-10-19 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This present work has as its own background the theoretical understanding of cyberculture, which is considered as the worldwide mediatic arrangement shaped by the encounter between telecommunications and informatics. It deals, specifically, with interactivity understood as the social process that organizes and structures the world, both in its sociocultural activities and in its everyday life, by the glocal cybercultural practices. It is an academic research on the inner logics of the sociotechnological development after Second World War, taking into consideration the last three decades, when the microinformatics has appeared and developed. Within this context, in which the interactive technologies became essential, the present work tries to make tension with approaches which proposes the interactivity as the solution for all human body and intellectual limitations, as well as for social problems and democratic realizations. In this sense, the research tries to demonstrate that the interactivity, before fulfilling all these promises, works like a fallacy, updating in new bases and improperly the utopian ideals of the cybernetic theory. This way, the work maps different theoretical perspectives about the theme and then it makes articulations and developments to comprehend the importance of the interactivity for the contemporary civilizatory process, markedly mediatic. Even though what has been written in this field is vast and abundant, this work expects to contribute with the researches about interactivity, considering it not only as a ordinary and practical informatics procedure observed in the relation between humans and computers, but, as well, as the main structuring vector of the contemporary civilization. The theoretical perspectives of Philippe Breton e Serge Proulx on communications as utopia, of Paul Virilio, with regards to dromology, and of Eugênio Trivinho, relating to cyberculture and glocal phenomenon, represent, along all the work, interesting and fundamental contributions for our research / O presente trabalho se insere no cenário teórico da cibercultura, atual arranjamento mediático planetário configurado pela convergência entre telecomunicações e informática. Aborda, especificamente, a interatividade tomada como o processo social que, por meio de práticas glocais ciberculturais, organiza e dinamiza o mundo, no que tange tanto a atividades socioculturais, quanto à vida cotidiana. Trata-se de um trabalho exclusivamente reflexivo que se debruça sobre a lógica do processo sociotecnológico posterior ao final da Segunda Guerra Mundial, com destaque para as três últimas décadas, nas quais a microinformática surgiu e se desdobrou. Nesse contexto, em que as tecnologias interativas tornaram-se imprescindíveis, o presente trabalho busca fazer tensão com correntes de pensamento celebrativas que atribuem à interatividade o condão para superar limitações corporais e intelectuais humanas, assim como para solucionar mazelas relacionadas aos laços sociais e à realização democrática. Nesse sentido, procura-se demonstrar que a interatividade, antes de cumprir tais promessas, vigora como falácia a principal hipótese da pesquisa , atualizando de modo reescalonado e indevido os ideais utópicos da teoria cibernética. Para tanto, recorre-se à pesquisa bibliográfica com o objetivo de se mapear os vários enfoques sobre o tema, para, então, se realizar articulações e desdobramentos que subsidiem uma compreensão apurada do processo civilizatório contemporâneo, marcadamente mediático. Não obstante o vasto leque de livros, ensaios e artigos, acadêmicos ou não, disponíveis, o trabalho espera contribuir com as pesquisas sobre a interatividade, abordando-a não apenas como procedimento informático pontual e pragmático observado na relação entre humanos e computadores, mas também, e principalmente, como vetor de organização do modus operandi da civilização contemporânea. As intenções se alinham, portanto, e não por acaso, às perspectivas teóricas que vêm sendo desenvolvidas por Philippe Breton e Serge Proulx, sobre a comunicação como utopia, por Paul Virilio, a respeito da dromologia, e por Eugênio Trivinho, no que se refere à cibercultura e ao fenômeno glocal