The Bigger Picture: a design-led approach to creating realistic visuals for better explainability of AI (XAI) 

Artificial intelligence is increasingly part of everyday life, yet public perceptions are often shaped by sci-fi tropes, clichés and limited or inaccurate aesthetics. The predominance of white anthropomorphised and creation of Adam robots, glowing brains and binary code fail to convey what AI truly is or how it functions [1,2,3]. More critically, the current imagery reinforces misconceptions and restricts wider public understanding of the actual, realistic uses and impact of AI on society [4].



In this work we present, The Bigger Picture, a science, HCI and design driven initiative which translates community-based workshop outcomes into visual interventions aimed at shifting public mental models of AI into more realistic, grounded and human-centred ones [5]. The Bigger Picture project primarily focuses on promoting Explainable AI by fostering informed discussions about the implications of AI in the creative industries and encouraging public participation in the process of artistic creation, interpretation, and critique. Through a series of co-design workshops with designers, artists and computer scientists in Dublin and Cork and with teenage participants in Dublin, we explored themes such as, How would we like AI to be portrayed in images?, Do current images of AI portray specific aspects of the technology?, Do they enhance public understanding, and are they true to the realities of AI? These workshops encouraged participants to critically examine common portrayals of AI in the media and brainstorm more realistic and diverse representation leading to insights which directly informed our two calls for images. These calls invited professional artists and designers to contribute their own interpretations on the themes of “AI is everywhere: everyday uses of AI, AI is human and AI is complex” [6] and student artists to submit on the theme of “AI is all around” [7]. A central objective of the project, and part of a larger body of work in the field was to promote Explainable AI (XAI), the goal of making AI technologies understandable and accessible for non-technical users. By introducing some basic concepts around how explanations for AI are depicted in visual terms such as using decision trees, if-then binary statements or showing feature relevance participants became familiar with the underlying concepts and inner workings of AI [8]. Participants also explored the broader implications of AI on visual culture by creating images that referenced or were inspired by their own feelings around AI both before and after each workshop and through a pictogram design challenge. Here participants explored how to visually depict complex themes around how AI works which encouraged critical thinking about the impact of human understanding of AI, on creative practice and on society more widely.