New Frontiers in Metaphor Visualization

An Approach Through Generative Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

In the last two years, our culture and our everyday lives have literally been invaded by the use of new
technological systems based on the operation of artificial intelligence. In a very short time, we have
seen the development of new platforms capable of generating images or texts autonomously,
following only instructions - input - of a few words. From this thought comes our question. What
would happen if we asked such a system to produce something using a metaphor as input? The
metaphor was chosen because, according to important semiotic and linguistic theories (Eco, Lakoff
& Johnson), it is one of the foundational elements of human thought. As we will see, generative
artificial intelligence systems exhibit different behaviors when faced with metaphorical inputs. In this
article, we will attempt to explore these behaviors and the variables that trigger them through various
approaches.