This project aims to explore the use of human-AI co-creative tools to facilitate broad public engagement in critical societal and civic dialogues. AI technologies have experienced remarkable advancements in the past decade, with one notable field being computational creativity, where algorithms autonomously generate human-level "creative" products such as visual art, poetry, and music. This intersection of human and algorithmic capabilities raises thought-provoking philosophical questions about the boundaries between them. However, the real-world impact of these technologies is most pronounced in computational co-creativity, where expert and amateur users seamlessly control powerful creative algorithms. Notably, the field of text-to-x (image, video, etc.) has seen significant growth, spearheaded by OpenAI's DALL-E release in 2021. These advancements have garnered attention in the media, particularly regarding their implications for the future of work, yet there is limited knowledge about their potential for social good and public participation in research.

crea.visions

In this project, a computational co-creativity tool called crea.visions will be used as a starting point and iterated on for the specific project goals. Crea.visions enables the general public to generate images and narratives related to current societal issues and future possibilities. Since its first launch in 2020, crea.visions was tested with over 1,000 participants and 25,000 generated images. The platform has become tailored for community-specific action, with the most recent versions allowing users to geotag problems within a specific part of a city and submit solutions linked up with existing NGOs.  Crea.visions was first launched with the the United Nations AI for Good and ArtBreeder to raise awareness about climate change and the importance of reaching the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Following versions of crea.visions have been used in Denmark at the Danish People’s Climate summit in fall 2021 and in May 2022 in Venice as part of ACM’s Creativity and Cognition Conference where people created visions (images + titles and captions) of possible futures. Crea.visions was also used in a series of events in January 2023 as part of the international Learning Planet Festival; participants were asked to generate images of problems and potential solutions for issues affecting the city of Paris. In 2023 spring, with the support of a SHAPE pilot grant, the interaction of crea.visions was tailored for Aarhus Municipality in Denmark, allowing for the inclusion of relevant stakeholders in socio-technical change processes.

Objectives

While previous interactions of crea.visions with the general public lacked depth and feasibility in discussing societal solutions due to the absence of relevant stakeholders, the Aarhus pilot has partially addressed this gap by collaborating with Aarhus Municipality. Through the AIAS fellowship, we are to involve an crucial third party - AU researchers, including staff, Ph.D., master's, and bachelor's students. Alongside the existing interface, we will develop a new interface and communication plan to engage AU researchers from all faculties, allowing them to convey the societal impact of their ongoing research through AI-assisted images in crea.visions. Online and physical forums will be established, enabling constructive and critical discussions among the general public, policymakers, and researchers regarding the future societal implications of research projects. An online gallery will feature AI-generated imagery, accompanied by text, metadata, and links to additional resources, while each submission will have an associated online discussion forum. This platform will foster dialogues on the opportunities and drawbacks of emerging research insights and applications. To initiate this process, we will incorporate narratives from fellow AIAS researchers, paving the way for a streamlined vision-creation process that can be scaled to more AU researchers. Moreover, we will test the concept on a Pan-European scale through the European Quantum Flagship, an ambitious initiative spearheading the second quantum revolution across Europe. This endeavour is partially coordinated by the Center for Hybrid Intelligence at Aarhus University.