AI scares you, but can you scare it?

This project, launched on the occasion of Halloween 2024, aims to explore the emergent ability of Artificial Intelligence to simulate human-like emotions.

Machines are increasingly capable of simulating human emotions. This has many positive applications, allowing AI chatbots to express empathy and care towards humans. But it also allows machines to manipulate human emotions, for example by using fear and anxiety to spread misinformation. This playful project aims to explore these topics by engaging the public and collecting data to help us understand how humans react to machines expressing emotions.

Visitors to the site attempt to discover the phobia of a particular AI-powered machine. The visitor writes a text prompt to generate an image, in an attempt to spook the machine. The machine evaluates the image and reacts to it, which can range from complete apathy to intense horror. The user can learn from this reaction in order to craft a new prompt.

Technically, we utilize Flux.1 (text-to-image generative AI) for image generation without modification, paired with GPT-4o (large language model) specifically prompted for image interpretation and response generation. For scoring images, we apply a proprietary algorithm.

Web site: https://spookthemachine.com/

Selected media: Spiegel, Tagesspiegel, B'SPOQUE magazine, Tech Explore

Team: Levin Brinkmann, Hiromu Yakura, Yvonne Bialek, Ali Dasmeh, Prateek Gupta, Bramantyo Ibrahim Supriyatno, Thomas Müller, Bill Powers, Rodrigo Bermudez Schettino, Ignacio Serna, Omar Sherif, Anna Sophia Tiedeke, Mar Canet Sola, Iyad Rahwan