In this doctoral dissertation, I explored what design knowledge(s) could facilitate bringing More-than-Human (MTH) commitments into the design of Creative AI technology. The work is theoretically aligned with more-than-human feminist posthumanities, and frames MTH design as an emerging and alternative design paradigm to predominant human-centred design approaches in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The central contribution is more-than-human re-imaginaries, an approach which aims at re-configuring the design practices of Creative AI towards alternative ontologies and aesthetics by examining imaginaries. The imaginaries are materialized through methods, such as fabulation, sketching, and speculative prototyping, across five design cases. More concretely, the dissertation introduces three critiques of current design practices in Creative AI that do not support MTH design: 1) human-centred conceptualization of creativity, 2) rationalist conceptualization of ecological relations, and 3) values of self-interest that are embedded through human-centred design practices. It also provides seven pathways for ontological and aesthetic more-than-human re-designing of Creative AI: 1) more-than-human conceptualization of creativity, 2) cultivating more-than-human aligned values, 3) situated designs in specific ecologies, 4) embodied more-than-human care, 5) nonhuman cultural practices, 6) more-than-human visual aesthetics, and 7) more-than-human data practices. These seven pathways are contributed as directions for further design inquiry within MTH Creative AI. They include specific design qualities and knowledge, and work as leverage points for entering into situated and nomadic more-than-human design practices of Creative AI.

While it’s becoming increasingly popular for designers to adopt a posthumanist view that conceptually positions nonhumans as collaborators through which relational creativity and knowledge emerge, challenges remain for human designers to practice decentering themselves in design activities. We approach this challenge through an autoethnography study of open weaving accompanied by written reflections in a workbook. Through a more-than-human lens, we see opportunities for open weaving to surface the multiplicity of relational entanglements in making with nonhumans. Our analysis presents emerging narratives that examine nonhuman creativity and their active participation. We then discuss the frictions in decentering and how the nonhuman agency could be extended through the use of woven textiles. This ongoing work contributes with a posthuman perspective to open weaving that potentially enables designers to enter non-human relations in decentered ways.

While it's becoming increasingly popular for designers to adopt a posthumanist view that conceptually positions nonhumans as collaborators through which relational creativity and knowledge emerge, challenges remain for human designers to practice decentering themselves in design activities. We approach this challenge through an autoethnography study of open weaving accompanied by written reflections in a workbook. Through a more-than-human lens, we see opportunities for open weaving to surface the multiplicity of relational entanglements in making with nonhumans. Our analysis presents emerging narratives that examine nonhuman creativity and their active participation. We then discuss the frictions in decentering and how the nonhuman agency could be extended through the use of woven textiles. This ongoing work contributes with a posthuman perspective to open weaving that potentially enables designers to enter non-human relations in decentered ways.

Creative AI technology (AI used in creative practices) is predominantly designed through human-centered approaches, and more specificallyhuman-centered framing of creativity. Drawing on More-than-Human (MTH) design, in this paper, we argue for the need to shift from designing for human-centered creativity to designing for sympoietic making-with within situated ecologies, when it comes to creativity technology. We approach this through a relational, site-oriented design research inquiry that starts with a multispecies ethnography in a local ecology. Through this, we develop insights of more-than-human co-creation processes within the environmental ecology and bring these insights to a materialized form in speculative designs to examine them further. Subsequently, we examine the speculations through the critiques of human-centered conceptualization of creativity, providing an analytical tool for examining human-centered vs. more-than-human-centered notions of creativity in the design processes of creativity technology.

Adoption of AI technologies in the arts has faced a divided reception and raised controversies—while some artists critique them, others embrace the opportunities they provide. In this paper, we contribute empirical insights into what motivates artists’ adoption of AI art technologies, as well as what kind of worldviews these motivations for AI adoption in artistic contexts embody. We shed light on these questions by presenting results from a qualitative interview study (N = 19) of AI artists practicing in Nordic countries. Five key themes emerged that describe artists’ motivations for using AI in their work, which we analyse in reflection with Kerschner and Ehlers' Attitudes Towards Technology (ATT) framework in terms of underlying attitudes of AI-Enthusiasm, Pragmatism, Romanticism, and Scepticism. Our analysis diversifies the understanding of why artists use AI, surfacing cultural and political tensions inherent in adoption of AI technologies for artistic and creative use.

From issues of intellectual property rights, environmental impact,and the question of creativity in itself, Creative AI  (AI applied to arts and design) presents many pressing ethical challenges. At thes ame time, AI ethics guidelines have been criticised for their rationalist inactionability, highlighting the need for finding ground-up approaches for exploring situated ethics and anticipatory – rather than reactive – ethics in AI technology design. In this paper, we present the results of organising two workshops with Creative AI practitioners in writing fictional research abstracts (FRAs). The participants wrote future-oriented research scenarios for Creative AI and engaged in discussion about them, with the aim to critically reflect on Creative AI ethics and futures in an anticipatory manner. In this paper, we provide an analysis of the imaginaries within the abstracts (e.g. stakeholders, technology framing, and scientific study framing in the abstract), as well as a thematic analysis of topics evoked in and by the abstracts. We observe that the FRAs facilitated five different kinds of thematic discussions, of which nature of creativity and role on AI in the society were particularly prevalent. We also witnessed socio-technical continuity that brought current and past conditions as constraints into the future scenarios. We subsequently reflect on how the FRAs engaged with ethical questions using the Anticipatory Technology Ethics perspectives of technology, artefact, and application. Our work contributes to the empirical understanding of the ethical concerns of future Creative AI technologies and their role in society, while extending the empirical insights of applying the FRA method into a situated case of anticipatory ethics reflection.

In this third installment of our GenAI workshop series at DIS, we focus on ‘stopsigns’—the blockages that impede progress in design research with GenAI. These stopsigns manifest as both semantic barriers (political, social, or mental frameworks) and pragmatic hurdles (technical limitations or implementation challenges) that persist despite the rapid advancements since the GenAI boom. Such stopsigns present a productive tension—they often contain partial truths worthy of consideration while simultaneously being shortsighted in ways that prevent progression. From blanket rejection to uncritical acceptance, these barriers affect how meaningfully we engage with GenAI’s potential. Our workshop welcomes both returning and first-time participants to share their experiences with these persistent challenges and work together to develop practical solutions. Through analysis of real cases and hands-on activities, we’ll build strategies for moving beyond these obstacles while acknowledging their legitimate concerns. Our goal is to foster more thoughtful integration of GenAI in design research and practice.

The advancement of AI-tools for musical performance has inspired exciting opportunities for interaction with musical-AI-agents. Interactions between humans and AI-agents in musical settings entail dynamic exchanges of control and power, and framings of AI-agents’ roles by human performers. We probe these framings and power-control exchanges through qualitative thematic lenses, drawing from post-phenomenology, matters of fact and concern and feminist science and technology studies. We contribute with a novel interdisciplinary analytical method as a tool for developers and designers of AI systems to help visibilise and examine the implicit, the wider connections and entangled filaments in Human–AI musical interactions.

Since 2022, Visual Generative AI (vGenAI) tools have experienced rapid adoption and garnered widespread acclaim for their ability to produce high-quality images with convincing photorealistic representations. These technologies mirror society’s prevailing visual politics in a mediated form, and actively contribute to the perpetuation of deeply ingrained assumptions, categories, values, and aesthetic representations. In this paper, we critically analyze Stable Diffusion (SD), a widely used open-source vGenAI tool, through visual and intersectional analysis. Our analysis covers; (1) the aesthetics of the AI-generated visual material, (2) the institutional contexts in which these images are situated and produced, and (3) the intersections between power systems such as racism, colonialism, and capitalism—which are both reflected and perpetuated through the visual aesthetics. Our visual analysis of 180 SD-generated images deliberately sought to produce representations along different lines of privilege and disadvantage—such as wealth/poverty or citizen/immigrant—drawing from feminist science and technology studies, visual media studies, and intersectional critical theory. We demonstrate how imagery produced through SD perpetuates pre-existing power systems such as sexism, racism, heteronormativity, and ableism, and assumes a default individual as white, able-bodied, and masculine-presenting. Furthermore, we problematize the hegemonic cultural values in the imagery that can be traced to the institutional context of these tools, particularly in the tendency towards Euro- and North America-centric cultural representations. Finally, we find that the power systems around SD result in the continual reproduction of harmful and violent imagery through technology, challenging the oft-underlying notion that vGenAI is culturally and aesthetically neutral. Based on the harms identified through our qualitative, interpretative analysis, we bring forth a reparative and social justice-oriented approach to vGenAI—including the need for acknowledging and rendering visible the cultural-aesthetic politics of this technology and engaging in reparative approaches that aim to symbolically and materially mend injustices enacted against social groups.

Toys as situated within the relational ontologies of children includes how more-than-human relations are imagined and valued through play. Motivated by a concern for a damaged environment, we critique a selection of existing toys intended for outdoor play and fabulate other versions based upon alternative relations. From the detailing of six redesigns through text and collage, we foreground generative pathways for how children, and adults, might relate differently to nature. These pathways are presented as questions prompted by the toys. This exploratory research contributes to the imagining of multispecies worlds and the agency of children in toying with more-than-human relations.