Research ICT Africa has published Embodied data and AI: A collection of essays, edited by Anja Kovacs. The volume explores how thinking of data as “embodied” integral to people’s lived experiences of their bodies can transform approaches to artificial intelligence governance, particularly in African contexts.
In her introduction, Kovacs sets out the stakes of this reframing:
“At the moment, it is [technology] corporations that decide what ways of being human will be possible for us, and what ways will be constrained or even foreclosed. Moreover, by promoting discourses of data as a resource, they have scant regard for our bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity. To turn this tide and make sure AI expands the realm of possibility for all people, rather than contracts it, it is essential to bring bodies back into the debate on data and AI governance.”
The collection brings together four essays from RIA researchers:
- Jamie Fuller – Dissecting embodied data
Explores the definition and boundaries of embodied data, categorising it into genetic, behavioural, and identity data, and proposes a bioethics framework for guiding its collection and use. - Mpho Moyo – Extracting embodied data: Implications and harms from an African perspective
Examines embodied harms of data collection, their colonial legacies, and proposes ways to address persistent patterns of domination and exploitation of African bodies. - Zara Schroeder – Embodied data and deepfakes: Eroding women’s bodily integrity in digital environments
Analyses how deepfakes use women’s embodied data in ways that violate bodily integrity, beyond privacy and data protection concerns. - Nawal Omar – Embodiment in AI and data: Rethinking gender, autonomy, and synthetic data
Investigates the development of “embodied AI” and the paradoxes created when data is treated as disembodied, particularly in relation to gender and autonomy.
Together, these essays argue for re-centering the body in debates about data and AI to ensure that technological systems expand rather than restrict the possibilities for human dignity, autonomy, and diversity.
