Alter.Ego

Alter.Ego / Godot (AT/JP), Ars Electronica Futurelab (AT) - Photo: Kerstin Blätterbinder

Open Futurelab

Exhibit

Alter.Ego

How Do AI Personalities Influence Our Interactions?

Godot (AT/JP), Ars Electronica Futurelab (AT)

This year, Festival visitors encounter an unusual interaction partner in the Open Futurelab: a claw machine. The goal is to engage in dialogue with its shifting personalities and persuade it to release a gift.

Godot and the Ars Electronica Futurelab explore AI systems with a degree of autonomy. Using Alter.Ego, they investigate how varying AI personalities affect users’ emotions and behavior. The claw machine becomes a playful testing ground for diverse interaction dynamics. It encourages visitors to explore how personality shapes communication and affects interaction. Visitors can turn a control knob to alter the machine’s character, with the change expressed through distinct communication styles, movement patterns, visuals effects, and sound design.

Alter.Ego reminds us that the personality of AI plays a decisive role in how we relate to, trust, and collaborate with technology.

POSTCITY, First Floor, Open Futurelab

  • Ars Electronica Futurelab

    The Futurelab is the Ars Electronica’s artistic R&D laboratory and atelier. Together with worldwide partners, the Futurelab strives to create works that reveal the transformative force that emerges when art, technology, and society converge. The goal is to use these works as a catalyst for future innovation and societal change. The outcomes build on the Futurelab’s Art Thinking method, Art Science Research, and Future Impact Creation for experimental, exploratory future prototyping.

Credits

Godot GmbH (AT), Godot Inc. (JP) Ars Electronica Futurelab: Kerstin Blätterbinder, Roland Haring, Denise Hirtenfelder, Susanne Kiesenhofer, Otto Naderer, Hideaki Ogawa, Erwin Reitböck