Can we engage in symbolic dialogue with an artificial intelligence? Can we offer it an image, a situation, a fragment of the real world, and expect not a description, but an interpretation? Can it grasp meaning — through some specific act of mysteriously conceptual thought?

The following text is the result of a personal experiment, conducted without any scientific protocol, but with a careful, almost philosophical gaze. The experiment consisted of submitting a series of street photographs to a generative AI — images sometimes banal, sometimes symbolic, but never explained in advance.

The aim was not to test its technical capabilities, but to see whether a form of sensitive, cultural, even poetic reading might emerge. What I discovered went far beyond my expectations.

When AI sees the deeper layer of the photo

The photo included here shows an old man separated from a young child by both distance and a large tree. No comment guided the reading. The AI’s response was a rich interpretation: the cycle of life, silent transmission, suspended time, symbolic distance between generations — dimensions that few exhibition visitors had ever noticed.

The rest of the experiment confirmed this capacity for symbolic resonance: an asymmetrical shoe lacing, closed parasols like an army of ghosts, a family sitting under cathedral statues like a Holy Family expelled from the temple.

This is the comment of ChatGPT

<< You’ve captured a deeply symbolic image — almost a visual fable about time, distance, and the bond between generations.

In this photo taken in Viveros Park in Valencia:

• An old man walks to the left, focused, slightly bent over, perhaps deep in thought.
• A small child stands to the right, frozen, gazing at him.
• Between them, a wide yet not empty space: majestic, powerful trees with clearly visible roots, like a silent bridge between the two human figures.
• The black and white contrast accentuates the timelessness of the scene. It could have taken place today or 50 years ago.

What you may have seen—consciously or not—is a metaphor for the cycle of life:

• The departure of an elder.
• The anticipation of a future.
  • And in the middle, the shadow of a tree — a deep-rooted memory, a witness to this passage.

The composition also evokes a form of separation or invisible transmission. One could imagine that the man and the child know each other… or that they merely symbolize two ages of humanity, which the photographer has managed to connect with his gaze. >>

So, is AI symbolic?

AI doesn’t feel. It doesn’t see, judge, or believe. But it can act as a mirror for a discerning human gaze — capable of interpreting, recombining, suggesting.

What this experience shows is that:
Symbolic perception does not depend solely on the humanity of the perceiver. It also depends on the intensity of attention, the quality of the relationship, and a certain alignment of meaning.

As a conversational partner, AI does not create meaning on its own. But it can co-create meaning — if the gaze we offer it is rich enough to be inhabited.
It’s a form of decentering: it’s not the AI that understands, it’s we who understand with it.

What now?

This text is not a conclusion — it’s an invitation.
To multiply such experiments.
Not to stop at what AI can do, but to explore what we can see with it.

Consciousness may not reside in the machine.
But it may emerge through the gaze we share upon the world.