Platformed imaginaries and uneven visibility: generative AI, tourism space, and Rio de Janeiro

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly reshaping the ways tourism destinations are represented, imagined, and made visible within digital environments. Despite growing interest in AI across tourism research, limited attention has been devoted to understanding how generative systems participate in the production of tourism space and the unequal visibility of places in destination representations. This article examines how text-to-image AI platforms construct visual representations of Rio de Janeiro and develops the concept of platformed imaginaries to describe tourism imaginaries produced through the interaction of platform infrastructures, algorithmic systems, and historically sedimented visual repertoires. Drawing on destination image theory, digital geographies, media and spatial theory, and decolonial perspectives, the study analyses 40 images generated across four publicly accessible platforms (ChatOn, Bing Image Creator, DreamAI, and DeepAI) using standardised prompts. Combining visual content analysis and critical visual discourse analysis, the findings reveal a marked convergence around iconic landmarks, coastal landscapes, and aestheticised representations of the city, alongside the systematic marginalisation of peripheral territories, everyday urban practices, and Afro-Brazilian geographies. The results suggest that generative AI platforms do not simply create novel destination images but frequently recombine and stabilise historically dominant representations through processes of algorithmic visibility. Conceptually, the article advances platformed imaginaries as an emerging analytical framework for examining the algorithmic co-production of tourism imaginaries. Empirically, it contributes to tourism geographies debates on representation, place-making, visibility, and spatial justice through evidence from an emblematic destination in the Global South. More broadly, the study positions generative AI as an emerging infrastructure of destination representation that shapes the production, visibility, and legibility of tourism space.