ROOTS: Grounding AI

ROOTS is a digital platform combining AI with ethnographic insights, offering designers a path to create culturally accurate, sustainable products.

Watch the 1-minute pitch video

https://youtu.be/zgGcM3edElY

Long description

ROOTS is an AI-driven image-generation platform for designers and creatives to create culturally relevant products and services. Leveraging the principles of ethnographic research, ROOTS is a novel process our team developed and tested among designers: guiding them through the steps of image collection, prompt writing, and cultural knowledge building. The platform, community engagement model, and consultancy services we offer guide individuals through this process to produce sustainable products and services for people and planet. ROOTS tackles the inherent biases being coded into AI, which results in place-based images often being inaccurate representations of the cultures they depict. This can be dangerous when designers are using AI tools to create products and services that impact our everyday lives. With ROOTS, designers are able to generate culturally represented images that reflect the appropriate interactions among people, objects, and the environment for informed production of sustainable design.