内容摘要：The salary was good, he was told. He would be working on computers in an office.

The salary was good, he was told. He would be working on computers in an office.

The woman’s story stayed with Garcia after he returned to Barcelona and his work as cofounder of the design studio, Domestic Data Streamers (DDS).Over the years, the studio has grown into a 30-person team of experts in varied disciplines such as psychology, architecture, cognitive science, journalism and design. The studio has collaborated with diverse institutions such as museums, prisons and churches, as well as the likes of the United Nations, and uses technology to bring “emotions and humanity” to data visualisation.

Then, in around 2019, with the rise of generative artificial intelligence – a model of machine learning that uses algorithms to create new content from data scraped from the internet – the team began to explore image-generating technology, following the release of ChatGPT.As they did, Garcia thought of the grandmother from Syria and how this technology might help someone like her by constructing images based on memories.He believes that memories – captured through records like photographs – play an integral role in connecting generations.

“Memories are the architects of who we are. … It’s a big part of how social identities are built,” he says.He also likes to cite Montserrat Roig, a Catalan author, who wrote that the biggest act of love is to remember something.

But in the past, people had fewer opportunities to document their lives than their mobile phone-wielding contemporaries, he says. Many experiences have been omitted or erased from collective memory due to lack of access, persecution, censorship or marginalisation.

So with this in mind, in 2022, Garcia and his team launched the Synthetic MemoriesThe media are busy demonising Mahmudabad. Soon, his actual words will vanish into the dense fog of propaganda, replaced by the image of a devious, cunning, scheming Muslim etched into the collective Hindu imagination.

Mahmudabad has appeared before the SIT. Meanwhile, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the BJP, has announced plans for a public demonstration against him. It is asking Ashoka University to sack him because he has written “antinational posts”. The mouth organ of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent body of the ruling BJP and ABVP, has also joined the chorus asking for action against Mahmudabad.We see the same playbook unfolding – the one used to vilify scholars like Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, turning them into enemy figures within the BJP ecosystem with the help of the media, police and judiciary.

One can only hope that the police officers remain steadfast, unaffected by judicial remarks or shrill propaganda and read Mahmudabad’s plain lines with constitutional eyes. His words – crafted by a Muslim mind – call for empathy, understanding, justice, equality and dignity.The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.