I found myself thinking about the Automat recently while I was using Midjourney. As you give it various prompts, Midjourney creates images for you suggested by those prompts.
However, I soon started to notice that I was seeing images which looked a lot like other images that had already come up. And eventually I realized that I was seeing the work of actual humans, refracted through the software.
These were not simply computer generated sketches, but a collage of images that would be easily recognizable if seen in their original human-created contexts. In a sense, any software system based on an LDM (Large Data Model), such as ChatGPT or Mid-journey, is a kind of Automat.
It feels like a set of shiny high-tech drawers rotating past you, and you get the magic feeling that you can simply put in your coin, reach in and pull out a fully formed sandwich, apparently made by sheer wizardry. But behind this bright shiny surface are all the little ladies that you never see on the other side of the machine, crafting those sandwiches.
The difference is that in this case the ladies don’t realize that they are crafting sandwiches for you. They never actually intended them to be for you in the first place.