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Animating Minds: AI and the age-appropriate impact of children’s media

  • Written byPress Office
  • Published date 05 September 2024
Gracie Dahl, 2021. BA Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts. University of the Arts London, UAL.

University of the Arts London’s (UAL) Creative Computing Institute (CCI) has been awarded a prestigious £1.16 million UKRI Cross Research Council grant to to build an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can predict the age-appropriateness of children’s digital media.

The tool will analyse a video clip’s potential impact on children’s ability to learn, understand and develop self-control.

The innovative project brings together researchers from UAL, Queen Mary University of London, Birkbeck, Arts University Bournemouth and University of Brescia to combine their interdisciplinary insights from children's animation practice, media theory, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI.

Led by Professor Tim Smith, Professor in Cognitive Data Science at University of the Arts London, the project aims to create new methods and computational tools that will benefit industry, academia and families. Using state-of-the-art machine learning, and developmental science techniques such as eye-tracking and functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (a wearable method for imaging brain activity), the project will train a computational tool to understand how children aged 3-6 respond to animated media.

Animating Minds is one of 36 projects from the first round of UKRI’s new cross research council responsive mode pilot scheme - designed to stimulate exciting new interdisciplinary research.

Children increasingly learn, play, and socialise through digital media - and fears of negative impacts on their neurocognitive development has led early years agencies such as UK Chief Medical Officers, American Academy of Pediatrics and World Health Organisation to recommend limits on children's screen time and restrict it to 'high-quality' content.

In response to this issue, the AI tool will be a useful instrument for media creatives to check whether content is developmentally appropriate for their target audience. Simultaneously, it will allow parents to make more informed decisions on what their children watch.

We all know that modern childhood is increasingly mediated by screens. We hope that the Animating Minds project will be a timely intervention, providing tools for parents to gain peace of mind when sifting through the overwhelming amount of children’s media out there. Our research will be in partnership with the UK children's media industry and our scientific studies will be guided by their creative insights about designing developmentally appropriate content.

— Professor Tim Smith, Professor in Data Science, Creative Computing Institute, UAL

The Animating Minds project will be based in CCI’s innovative new interdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange facility, the UAL Nerve Lab. Funded by Research England’s Regional Innovation fund, the Nerve Lab allows human experiences to be quantified, studied, computationally synthesised and incorporated into new artistic creations.

Animating Minds will be the first largescale project to exploit the innovative neurocognitive and computational facilities of the Nerve Lab and serve as a template for future academic and industry R&D projects.