Generative AI as a Playful yet Offensive Tourist: Exploring Tensions Between Playful Features and Citizen Concerns in Designing Urban Play

2025-01-27

AI Summary

This study investigates the potential and risks of generative AI (GAI) in fostering playful experiences within urban public space, with particular attention to risks of social exclusion, affective discomfort, and cultural offense. Methodologically, it reconceptualizes AI’s urban role through a “tourist metaphor,” integrating the iWonder image-generation tool, participatory workshops, in-depth interviews, and critical civic evaluation to establish a dual-track co-creation framework involving designers and citizens. It presents the first systematic identification of GAI’s “offensiveness” as an inherent property in public-space applications and distills four core playful attributes: agency, meaningful unpredictability, social performativity, and contextual embeddedness. The research yields 14 citizen-generated response strategies and actionable design principles. Its principal contribution is the first design framework that rigorously balances playful innovation with civic ethics—providing empirical grounding and normative guidance for deploying AI to enhance urban sociocultural resilience.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General Intelligence
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic ramifications for generative AI infrastructure and applications
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Play is pivotal in fostering the emotional, social, and cultural dimensions of urban spaces. While generative AI (GAI) potentially supports playful urban interaction, a balanced and critical approach to the design opportunities and challenges is needed. This work develops iWonder, an image-to-image GAI tool engaging fourteen designers in urban explorations to identify GAI's playful features and create design ideas. Fourteen citizens then evaluated these ideas, providing expectations and critical concerns from a bottom-up perspective. Our findings reveal the dynamic interplay between users, GAI, and urban contexts, highlighting GAI's potential to facilitate playful urban experiences through extit{generative agency}, extit{meaningful unpredictability}, extit{social performativity}, and the associated offensive qualities. We propose design considerations to address citizen concerns and the `tourist metaphor' to deepen our understanding of GAI's impact, offering insights to enhance cities' socio-cultural fabric. Overall, this research contributes to the effort to harness GAI's capabilities for urban enrichment.

Problem

• Generative AI
• Urban Gaming
• Socio-cultural Impact

Innovation

• Generative AI
• Urban Gaming Experiences
• Design Strategies