ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Media Governance and the Public Sphere
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1620310
This article is part of the Research TopicContesting Artificial Intelligence: Communicative Practices, Organizational Structures, and Enabling TechnologiesView all 5 articles
The Right to Game AI-Systems: A Speculative Right for Contestation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France
- 2CNRS, Paris, France
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This paper proposes the 'right to game AI-systems' as a speculative design artefact to challenge dominant narratives that position 'gaming' as a threat to algorithmic integrity. We argue that in high-stakes domains like insurance, health, and welfare, gaming the system should be recognized as a legitimate and necessary act of agency, resistance, and contestation. Rooted in a critical reading of the GDPR and the EU AI Act, and employing Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) and speculative design, we reframe the 'right to game' as a vital response to structural opacity and the unequal power dynamics inherent in AI governance. By connecting 'gaming' to established concepts of contestability, ethical hacking, and playful exploration, this paper argues for a radical shift in perspective that empowers individuals to become active participants in, rather than passive subjects of, algorithmic decision-making.
Keywords: Algorithmic governance, Contestability, Transparency, accountability, Speculative design, Futures studies, Socio-legal studies, GDPR
Received: 08 May 2025; Accepted: 22 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 van den Boom. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Freyja van den Boom, freyja.vandenboom@uantwerpen.be
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