Computational objects (eg, algorithms, bots, surveillance technology and data) have become increasingly present in our daily lives and are consequential for our changing relations to texts, multimodality and identity. Yet, our current theories of literacy, and especially the prevalence of mediational and representational perspectives, are inadequate to account for these changing relations. What are the implications for critical literacy education when it takes seriously computational agents that interact, produce and process texts? While such work is only beginning in education, scholars in other fields are increasingly writing about how AI and algorithmic mediation are changing the landscape of online intra-action, and business strategies and tactics for working with AI are advancing far ahead of critical literacy education. Drawing on our own and others' research into non-human actors online, and building on posthuman theories of networks, heterogeneous actants and the assemblage, in this conceptual paper, we sketch some of the forms of critical consciousness that media education might provide in this new mixed landscape.