The Paprika-Effect : Central and Eastern Europe as a Noisy Label in AI-Generated Images

This article examines how AI-generated images reproduce geopolitical imaginaries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) through a visual analysis of images generated using Midjourney. Drawing on popular geopolitics as a theoretical framework, the study situates AI image generation within a long-standing transglobal media environment in which visual culture plays a key role in shaping geopolitical knowledge and spatial hierarchies. Popular geopolitics foregrounds the power of everyday visual representations in producing meaning beyond formal discourse, a dynamic intensified by generative AI systems. Methodologically, the study analyses a dataset of eighty AI-generated images across twenty countries, using standardised prompts varying by gender and dress (folk costume versus contemporary clothing). The analysis focuses on culturally coded visual markers such as facial features, stylisation, and their relation to dress. The article conceptualises the observed pattern as the “paprika-ef fect”: a form of epistemic cultural f lattening in which complex regional identities are reduced to exaggerated, globally recognisable, and unevenly documented visual tropes. The findings suggest that generative AI systems reproduce not cultural accuracy, but the contradictions inherent in transglobal geopolitical imaginaries. Rather than of fering a fully systematic or generalisable account of AI image generation, this study adopts an exploratory approach. The analysis is intended to function as a hypothesis-generating intervention, identifying patterns that raise broader questions about the relationship between generative AI and geopolitical imaginaries, and it does not provide definitive empirical conclusions.