Abstract
AI hallucination and bias are commonly viewed as flaws, leading to a premature narrowing of their design space and an under-exploration of their potential to enrich community ties and meaning of place. Focusing on digital placemaking context, this research investigates how innocuous AI imperfections could foster interaction and connection between intercultural communities. We conducted workshops with Dutch locals and migrants who co-created and interacted with Generative AI applications that produced diverse content about places. Findings reveal that AI misinterpretations facilitated intercultural dialogue and connection by prompting shared correction, playful co- imagination, and memory exchange. Notably, biased outputs encouraged collective reflections and critical tracing of AI’s silences in underrepresented yet authentic places. We further propose design strategies that consider users’ familiarity with AI-referenced places for meaningful interaction. By reframing harmless AI fallibility as materials and unpacking their rich interactions with intercultural groups and places, this work advances approaches to crafting placemaking experiences with AI.
Keywords
Placemaking; Social interaction; Human-AI interaction; Empirical study
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.1142
Citation
Hung, P., Huang, J.Y., Liang, R.,and Wensveen, S.(2025) Correct to Connect: Exploring AI Hallucination and Bias as Social Glue for Digital Placemaking between Migrants and Locals, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.1142
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 4 - Human-Centered AI
Correct to Connect: Exploring AI Hallucination and Bias as Social Glue for Digital Placemaking between Migrants and Locals
AI hallucination and bias are commonly viewed as flaws, leading to a premature narrowing of their design space and an under-exploration of their potential to enrich community ties and meaning of place. Focusing on digital placemaking context, this research investigates how innocuous AI imperfections could foster interaction and connection between intercultural communities. We conducted workshops with Dutch locals and migrants who co-created and interacted with Generative AI applications that produced diverse content about places. Findings reveal that AI misinterpretations facilitated intercultural dialogue and connection by prompting shared correction, playful co- imagination, and memory exchange. Notably, biased outputs encouraged collective reflections and critical tracing of AI’s silences in underrepresented yet authentic places. We further propose design strategies that consider users’ familiarity with AI-referenced places for meaningful interaction. By reframing harmless AI fallibility as materials and unpacking their rich interactions with intercultural groups and places, this work advances approaches to crafting placemaking experiences with AI.