Walter Benjamin's "aura" in the Age of AI

Abstract

This thesis examines the philosopher and social critic Walter Benjamin’s concept of “aura” in light of recent technological developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). To this end, the empirical side of this research evaluates the narrative accuracy of large language models through a case study using Open AI’s Chat GPT3.5. Three different accounts of Walter Benjamin’s attempted escape and tragic fate are used as “prompts” (input) for Chat GPT, each selected to capture different types of historical narrative storytelling: Lisa Fittko’s memoir Escape Through the Pyrenees, Julie Orringer’s The Flight Portfolio and Anna Winger’s television series Transatlantic. The thesis evaluates the relevance, factual precision, and logical coherence of the AI’s output arising from the different prompts. The results are then used to discuss the applicability, relevance, and implications of Benjamin’s “aura” with respect to new generative technologies.