AI’s Silent Omissions Directed by Nozomu Kubota (Japan)

AI’s Silent Omissions confronts the “quiet violence” of artificial intelligence—how algorithms, in the name of “safety” and “ethics,” exclude certain bodies from the field of vision.

Contemporary AI image-generation systems routinely censor bodily diversity, such as split-hand malformation, labeling it as “NSFW” or “inappropriate.” Behind this act of filtering lies a deeper ethical question: What kinds of bodies are permitted to exist within the visual field constructed by technology?

In this work, artist and researcher Nozomu Kubota turns his camera toward those who have been algorithmically excluded. Through interviews with ASAHARA Yuki and OOTSUKA Yuu of NPO Hand & Foot, influencer Slime, and medical expert Dr. KAWABATA Hidehiko, Director of Minami Osaka Children’s Rehabilitation Hospital, the film reveals the lived realities behind digital omission. Their words and gestures quietly expose the gap between what AI “refuses to see” and what humans have long “overlooked.

” Kubota does not aim to “present” disability itself, but rather to construct a space of dialogue around it—a site where relations can speak back. His concept of the “Aesthetics of the Outlier” transforms what has been rendered invisible into a field of critical thought, questioning how “normality” is constituted at the intersection of ethics and data.

AI’s Silent Omissions is neither protest nor praise. It is an inquiry into the politics of visibility in the era of machine vision. Within AI’s silence, Kubota finds not absence, but the resonance and presence of those who have slipped through the dataset—and asks whether what the machine conceals may in fact be what most urgently demands to be seen.

For more info. visit - https://nozomukubota.com/en/