MIT News Highlights Research Collaboration with Assistant Professor Misha Sra

By Saehee Jong, Communications & Special Events Assistant

UCSB Assistant Professor Misha Sra, along with collaborators from MIT Media Lab and Osaka University, recently published a paper titled, "AI-generated characters for supporting personalized learning and well-being" in Nature Machine Intelligence. This paper was also featured in MIT News. Collaborators include graduate students Pat Pataranutaporn, Valdemar Danry, Joanne Leong, Assistant Professor Parinya Punpongsanon, Research Scientist Dan Novy, and Professor Pattie Maes.

The article explores positive use cases of AI-generated characters in education and well-being by increasing engagement and affective communication through the release of an open-source, easy-to-use, character generation pipeline that "combines AI models for facial gestures, voice, and motion." However, in an age where AI has the potential to produce "deepfake content," researchers also recognize the legal and ethical challenges that can arise with rapid technological progress.