Smart "Error"! Exploring Imperfect AI to Support Creative Ideation

Designers widely accept AI as a partner in the design process for its efficient and intelligent decision-making. However, AI is often not perfect, and AI error often makes humans dumbfounded. Literature has pointed out the value of such AI error, while still leaving its inspiration essence and application strategies uncharted from the practice perspective. This work focuses on bridging the practice gap by looking into and exploiting the imaginative "mislabeled" objects of object detection models. To gain insights into the inspiration of AI "error", we collected a dedicated AI "error" dataset from object detection and invited eight designers to share divergent comments on the "mislabeled" objects. Coding was then performed on the comments, which summarizes the inspiration of AI "error" into six atomic dimensions. Subsequently, we took a step further to an exploratory study, a comparative ideation experiment with 20 designers, investigating how to apply these inspiration dimensions to create ideas. Questionnaire and interview results revealed that essential inspiration of AI "error" could positively activate creativity, especially the "Outline" dimension. A design model CETR is then formulated by summarizing the application of atomic inspiration of "error" into four forms of creativity, which could be taken as a guideline for cooperative design with AI "error". In addition, we also sketch two approaches to generate more inspiring and applicable AI "error", elaborate on two principal characteristics of AI "error" for promoting creativity, and propose three strategies for better co-creating with AI "error". Finally, we provide insight into design research about AI self-awareness and human-AI collaboration.