AI-empowered Imagery Writing: Integrating AI-generated Imagery Into Digital Mental Health Service (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED The value of digital mental health services has been recently recognized. Nevertheless, the potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI) still needs to be explored, particularly concerning AI-generated imagery. Thus, we propose a novel paradigm termed "AI-empowered imagery writing" (AIW). AIW leverages AI's generative capacity to create real-time customized art imagery that specifically responds to the content of the writer's input text. The synergistic combination of expressive writing with visual art generation can enhance therapeutic outcomes by facilitating vicarious empathy, vicarious emotional expression, metacognitive gains, and exploring alternative perspectives that promote psychological growth. As a low-cost, scalable intervention, AIW is well-suited for broad application in enhancing public mental health, especially during social crises. To fully realize these benefits, future research can investigate the impact of AIW on writers' mental visualization skills and identify optimal implementation strategies.