For the 2024-2025 academic year, AIMS has awarded funding to support five new interdisciplinary research groups, each of which will consider the ramifications of generative AI in relation to a specific set of questions across journalism and cinema. The interdisciplinary groups include USC faculty as well as community partners and will query many of the issues most vital to addressing the evolving significance of generative AI now. 

Synthetic Journalism

Mike Ananny, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Matt Pearce, President, Media Guild of the West

A new political economy of journalism is emerging through the press’s encounters with GenAI, but this economy is nascent, susceptible to concentrated forms of power, and needing a proper airing – because it is not inevitable and is still alterable. We are in a brief window to show that GenAI journalism could be something other than what it currently is. This working group will (1) identify varied questions, perspectives, stakes, and frictions driving “synthetic journalism,” (2) commission, edit, and frame a set of essays from leading journalists and journalism scholars focused on tracing the political economy of synthetic journalism, and (3) publish and publicly present these essays in a practitioner-facing forum like the Columbia Journalism Review / Harvard’s Nieman Lab.

Generative AI and Copyright 

Jen Petersen, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Jef Pearlman, Gould School of Law

Generative AI has a copyright problem. To produce text or images from prompts, large language models must draw on text and images mainly created by humans. Many of these works are copyrighted, resulting in the launch of lawsuits against OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and other companies. However, perhaps copyright has a generative AI problem. The discussion of copyright and the suing of corporations raise novel questions about what constitutes creativity, how we define property in creative works – or in our images and visual and aural likenesses. These questions have the potential to shift the boundaries and logics of copyright law. This working group brings faculty from diverse departments together to ask questions about copyright, fair use, and new discourses of creativity.

Expressive Co-Creation With AI Text Companions for Everyday Wellness

Aisling Kelliher, School of Cinematic Arts

Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

This project explores AI text companions as a means for expressive co-creation with machines. Through the development of an experiential prototype, we examine how users express emotions, memories, and other internal experiences that might otherwise be difficult to process. We will invite potential users from diverse backgrounds to participate in the process of co-designing the prototype. Together, we look at the practice of expressing their murky experiences as a crucial first step toward everyday wellness and whether co-writing interactively with AI can offer relevant support.

TransQueerOS Lab

Kara Keeling, School of Cinematic Arts

The TransQueerOS (TQOS) Lab is inspired by Kara Keeling’s 2014 article, “QueerOS,” published in Cinema Journal (now The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies). Launched 10 years after the publication of that article, the TQOS Lab aims to gather theorists across disciplines, artists, designers, and media makers around a shared engagement with ideas related to the speculative possibility of a “TransQueer Operating System.” Participants in the TQOS Lab will be involved in producing research and scholarship as well as in experimenting with what the concept of “TransQueerOS” makes possible in practice.

Cinema’s Futures

Holly Willis, School of Cinematic Arts

Storytelling forms shift and change in relation to specific cultural moments. Today, we are at an important inflection point. As algorithms, AI, and computational systems increasingly mediate our experiences, they are also shifting the parameters of narrative. Algorithms don’t just suggest what stories we consume through recommendation engines; instead, they play an active role in shaping the stories themselves. This working group will explore emerging narrative forms in the context of generative AI through practices of making. The expected outcomes include a series of storytelling prototypes that exemplify new forms of narrative emerging in an algorithmic era. These prototypes will serve as both artistic explorations and research tools, allowing for a deeper understanding of how AI and algorithms are reshaping narrative structures.

Immersive AI for Creative Communities feat. Spectra Studio

Qianqian Ye, School of Cinematic Arts / Spectra Studio

Ziyaad Bhorat, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Harvey Moon, School of Cinematic Arts / Spectra Studio

China Bay Smith, Spectra Studio

Dominant narratives and visions of AI often sideline creative communities and multidisciplinary, multisensory ways of being and doing. We run the risk of monotyping our creative futures unless we can empower our creative communities working with AI to play, create, reflect, and even destroy. How can different disciplinary thinking and practice come together and create new AI experiences and reimagine collective futures? Our working group will aim to explore these threads by partnering USC AIMS with Spectra Studio to offer a series of critically reflective talks, workshops, performances, and exhibitions to explore how AI tools and platforms intersect with creative communities in Los Angeles.

AIMS launched the Spark Awards program in September 2023. These awards are provided to faculty from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism as research funding to help explore generative AI. Projects take risks, demonstrates possibilities, and show the power of our interdisciplinary practice together. 

We selected the 16 projects below from 20 faculty members across both schools. Faculty members who receive Spark Awards funding will develop their projects over the 2023-24 academic year, ranging from creating new assistive AI prototypes to inventing community-led AIs.

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Podcast Series: Exploring AI in Coaching Use Cases

Rafael Bracero, Adjunct Lecturer, USC Annenberg

Producing a set of three 60min podcasts exploring the emerging use of AI tools for 1-1 coaching, including interviewing firms developing AI models to simulate live 1-1 coaching sessions.

The Shallow and the Deep

Priya Jaikumar, Professor of Cinematic Arts, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Collaborating with AI to imagine a voice that is unimaginable and outside human control or comprehension, by creating an experimental dialogue between several voices: a scholar assessing energy; port and media infrastructures of the Adani Corporation; public relations pitches of deep sea carbon capture; and an expression, generated via AI, of deep sea fish. 

Empowering Community Data Wrangling with AI

François Bar, Professor of Communication and Spatial Sciences, USC Annenberg

Juan De Lara, Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, USC Dornsife

Co-developing related AI tools and capacity building workshops with community partners to explore how AI can empower grassroots community organizations to gather, analyze and present data, to better serve their members and become more effective advocates. 

Is Remix Video AI-Proof?

Virginia Kuhn, Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Vicki Callahan, Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Exploring the potential for generating sophisticated video essays using generative AI, since remix video is not only a staple in MAP curricula, but also an emergent scholarly enterprise in videographic criticism and project documentation. 

Logline AI

Stephen Gibler, Adjunct Assistant Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Developing "Logline AI", a film industry Pitch Deck Builder and Idea Creator which aims to use generative AI to build professional-grade creative pitch decks much more affordably for creatives

From Soundwaves to Pixels: Exploring AI’s Impact on Music Visualization and Video Art

Katie Gately, Adjunct Associate Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Exploring cutting-edge music-to-visual generative AI programs, including Neural Frames and Video Killed the Radio Star, through lectures, demonstrations, tutorials, and a full-day, 2-part workshop intensive tailored for USC community members who have an interest in music visualization, visual music, video art and video production with sync-based, automated editing capabilities.

World Building Seminar: Humans and AI in the "More-Than-Human-World"

Peggy Weil, Adjunct Assistant Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Organizing a series of five conversations/world-building workshops that visualize future (infra)structures and stories as we adopt and adapt to generative AI, focused on human vulnerability to chatbots and facial recognition.

Dreaming of Electric Broadsheets: GenAI and Front-End Development for News Websites

Keith Plocek, Assistant Professor of Professional Practice of Journalism, USC Annenberg

Conducting a case study on interactive website design in journalism to investigate how much front-end development can be achieved with generative AI.

Exploring the use of Neural Graphics for Immersive Storytelling

Scott Fisher, Professor of Cinematic Arts, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Mark Bolas, Professor of Cinematic Arts, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Exploring generative AI and neural graphics as a more efficient and cost-effective method for the creation of immersive environments with cinematically photorealistic visuals, combined with the navigability and freedom of 3D games, through several immersive XR experiences and a public demonstration/discussion of how these approaches might impact or replace current graphics workflows used across the School of Cinematic Arts' production efforts. 

AI in the Annenberg Media Newsroom: Building on Open-source Tools and Sharing the Process with our Community

Christina Bellantoni, Professor of Professional Practice of Journalism, USC Annenberg

Gabe Kahn, Professor of Professional Practice of Journalism, USC Annenberg

Working with a suite of AP-developed tools, exploring how coverage of USC Department of Public Safety (DPS) incidents can be automated and longform content can be made more accessible, with the desired final result being increased audience engagement and community awareness of how AI enables greater public access to information. 

Scripted Spaces

Andreas Kratky, Associate Professor of Cinematic Arts, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Creating spatial structures to start building a discourse in communication with generative AI, by tapping filmed spaces and their description in film scripts as a resource for spatial details, relationships, emotional qualities and other descriptive elements that creators habitually employ to describe.

Do Machines Dream of Magic?

Qianqian Ye, Adjunct Associate Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Creating an open-sourced website and series of intimate gatherings collaboratively developed by duo Qianqian Ye and AX Mina, to explore the role of traditional forms of magic during a time of generative AI magic, including the merger of ancient beliefs with futuristic systems and the tensions, opportunities, anxieties and hopes around the future of technology in a time of climate change and increased concerns about the state of the world.

Democratizing Visualization: Generative AI, Civic Imagination and Media

Colin Miles Maclay, Research Professor of Communication, USC Annenberg

Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education

Using and exploring visual generative AI tools to support civic imagination and media-making by gathering an understanding of associated practices, emerging norms, and a broad range of user reactions, in public-facing outputs

AI for Public Diplomacy

Jay Wang, Associate Professor of Journalism, USC Annenberg

Developing a policy essay that will provide the state of the field in the development of AI in public diplomacy

Making Memoir Machines

Aisling Kelliher, Visiting Associate Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Creating computational prototypes to explore assistive AI techniques for auto-generating personal media memoirs, including capturing diverse public opinion about the utility, value, or folly of this approach.

Automated Regimes of Secrecy

Ziyaad Bhorat, Associate Director, AI for Media & Storytelling (Center for Generative AI & Society)

Developing a global comparative research project that maps the way intellectual property and antitrust concerns interact to create the conditions for AI power structures that work against the public interest