Yihao Qiu was born in Xingning, Meizhou, Guangdong Province, China, an industrial and product designer based in Shenzhen City, who approaches his research and design process from a perspective of humanistic care and emotion, ​bringing a human touch into his work is a central to his design philosophy.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of many contemporary technologies, such as social media platforms, smart devices and global logistics systems. But recently, many prominent figures have expressed concern that artificial intelligence could get out of control, with disastrous effects on humanity and society. Issues regarding employee displacement, ethics, and non-transparent decision-making were among the public’s concerns. Alongside concerns about AI exacerbating wealth inequalities, loss of intelligent behaviours in humans, increase in social isolation, and the threat of abuses of power by malevolent actors (e.g. using deep fake material to spread misinformation), Coupled with the modification of artificial intelligence by science fiction movies and novels, many users have negative emotions and anxiety about artificial intelligence.

In this research, I aimed to investigate the effect of AI-assisted methods on users' AI anxiety. Specifically, I am trying to mitigate the negative emotions that artificial intelligence brings to people: for example, in AI anxiety, I am studying the more progressive or more effective ways to alleviate the anxiety that exists today and studying how to link the ways to alleviate negative emotions with AI, so that AI can also intervene and promote the emotions healing process. To bring human users closer to AI technology.

To achieve this, I combined an image narrative method approach with AI's image content generation capabilities. The image narrative method requires participants to actively participate and storytelling and share the image content to explore and express emotions. The image content used in the narrative session is generated by the AI after collecting experience details from different kinds of users on the Internet and the community.

The methods adopted in this research have the following purposes: reducing participants' anxiety and stress via narrative storytelling and story creation, during the process, AI-generated will be used in generating different story material images as the workshop materials also the final visual production, thereby trying to reshape people's perceptions of AI.

By researching and investigating the intersection of artificial intelligence and image narrative methods, this research aims to contribute to promoting the continued development of artificial intelligence and minimizing users' anxiety and negative emotions towards artificial intelligence. The results of this research will help to encourage the public to rethink their relationship with AI and their future under AI, it also will contribute to promoting a better public understanding of AI and facilitating a smoother integration of AI into human society, and this discovery may also provide an understanding of emerging alleviate anxiety methods, thereby contributing to the study of the impact of AI intervention and integration with other media.

With the increasing use of artificial intelligence technology in the fields of art and painting, the relationship between humans, artificial intelligence and artistic creation has become a hot topic of discussion, and I began to investigate people’s reactions and opinions towards artworks created by artificial intelligence. I think that by studying the public’s views on artificial intelligence or artificial intelligence art, we can also explore people’s cognition and attitude towards artificial intelligence and think about the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence. This can promote the better development of AI in the future. Serve not only the art industry but also human society and inspire practitioners related to artificial intelligence.

I wonder whether people will develop fear of AI, resistance, or anxiety about AI and see it as a threat. However, since artificial intelligence itself is relatively complex in terms of background and concept, and interviewees may not have artistic or technical backgrounds, it will be difficult to obtain key information directly through interviews.

​So, this project decided to use works generated by AI and works created by human artists as experimental materials to design an AI work recognition test. By directly inviting participants to identify confusing artificial intelligence products in the author's works, this form of test will simplify the concept of AI itself, making the complex concepts of AI easier to understand and more concrete, allowing participants to see and feel the specific features of the work more intuitively.

So, I decided to implement an offline workshop format testing. By participating in AI work identification activities, participants can interact and comment on different AI works, and human artist works on the spot, receive real-time feedback from participants, understand the emotions of participants, and allow people to gradually think about the relationship between humans and AI while joining in this activity. In addition, a workshop that adopts the nature of a game to identify AI works can attract participants' interest to experience it to a greater extent and can encourage participants to express their views on identification works, AI itself, and generative art during the participation process.

During the workshop, I noticed that different backgrounds, personalities, and ages influenced their choices and affected their reactions and emotions towards incorrect answers. In the interviews conducted during the workshop tests, I found that some participants reacted negatively under the influence of AI threats, constantly pondering the significance of their creations. However, some participants were not greatly affected by artificial intelligence, showing more neutral or positive reactions. Through this test activity, which started with identifying AI-created works, I was able to discover that AI indeed has a psychological impact on certain people, even causing anxiety or fear. However, this does not completely deny AI's role in the activity.

With the rapid development of Artificial intelligence, humans will always feel threats and anxiety from different sources, and these threats will not disappear over time. More importantly, after understanding the psychological roots of negative views on AI, it helps people alleviate and combat this anxiety, and adapt and coexist with AI.

Key methods

Game-base workshop.

Storytelling& image narration as method.

Combined with AI-generated images (AI-assist).

“Game-Based” Workshop

This Research uses a game-based workshop approach, playing while participating, combined with image narrative storytelling, to explore and alleviate participants’ anxiety related to AI. This approach was chosen because interactive and immersive experiences can significantly influence and promote emotional understanding, and are also conducive to promoting participants’ interest, making it easier for participants to engage in activities, using the appeal of games and the expressiveness of narrative storytelling to allow participants to express and explore free or AI-related ideas in a structured but creative environment. The workshop is centred on encouraging interaction, and creation, and promoting shared experience.

Interventions

Workshop in dialogue with narrative images, providing short dialogues in the form of image narratives and reminders. Image narrative is a therapeutic tool or resource that can be used as an adjunct to support inner and emotional therapy and is not intended to replace the role of the therapist. This research wants to take advantage of the potential of AI generation combine it with participants’ unique texts and allow creativity and imagination to flourish during the storytelling stage.
The novelty of AI generation combined with an image narrative workshop is that it is a workshop which could be influenced by different players. The free text provided according to different types, different hearts and emotions enhance the adaptability of the narrative workshop in this study.

Customization And Adaptation

For this research, the content used to generate images is free text collected through interviews, questionnaires, etc., which has been expanded and tested. This research plan includes 15 to 30-minute interviews with students, university counsellors, and community members to support the development of the image content of the workshop. If the interviews are conducted online, an appropriate number of emoticons are allowed in the conversation to increase user engagement. After the text collected and organized in this way is generated to create the image cards used in the workshop, the “Testing workshops” will be held for user testing to provide feedback to improve the quality and reliability of the design. After completing the testing session, this study will also hold a final workshop. The highly free conversations conducted by different players during the final workshop, these conversations from their respective wonderful imaginations will also positively influence the content produced by this research after the event.

The final output of this research is to respond to the theme of Design with AI to combat anxiety. First, through a relaxed Game-based narrative workshop to cheer up the atmosphere and relieve the stress of the participants, and then use narrative storytelling as a medium to let the participants actively think and imagine what it will be like to live with artificial intelligence in the future.

At the end of the narrative workshop, the imagined vision of coexisting with AI in the minds of the participants will be recorded by this research and converted into key texts to be generated again using AI. This is the most real idea of participants as users to co-live and live harmoniously with AI in the future.

I explored the impact of Designing with AI on combat anxiety. I studied the use of image narrative in the game-based workshop to alleviate users' anxiety about AI and transform fear into creative engagement. Through interactive storytelling, participants re-imagined their relationship with technology and discussed and creatively explored topics such as the future development and coexistence of artificial intelligence. I found that the workshop not only reduced stress, but also encouraged deep reflection and helped participants express a future of integration with technology. The narratives formed under the impetus of AI helped me capture real human emotions and perspectives, which had a positive impact on cultivating a more optimistic view of future technological integration. I also hope that this research can inspire the public to learn, communicate and further explore AI.