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    Generative AI and children’s digital futures: New research challenges

    Access Status
    Fulltext not available
    Authors
    Leaver, Tama
    Srdarov, Suzanne
    Date
    2025
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
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    Citation
    Leaver, T. and Srdarov, S. 2025. Generative AI and children’s digital futures: New research challenges. Journal of Children and Media. 19 (1): pp. 65-70.
    Source Title
    Journal of Children and Media
    DOI
    10.1080/17482798.2024.2438679
    ISSN
    1748-2798
    Faculty
    Faculty of Humanities
    School
    School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry
    Funding and Sponsorship
    http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/CE200100022
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/96847
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    From WALL·E (Stanton, 2008) to The Wild Robot (Sanders, 2024), children’s popular cultureis filled with sympathetic, lovable, heroic artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic characterswho make passionate and ethical choices about their own existence and help others. TheAIs of contemporary cinema and television are often excellent role models. Indeed,popular culture has been one of the main ways that AI have entered mainstreamimaginaries for more than half a century (Leaver, 2012).Yet even in popular culture, AI tend to be normative, and in most cases, coded white(Cave & Dihal, 2020). In feature films the creators of AI are similarly white male scientists the vast majority of the time (Cave et al., 2023). With the public launch of ChatGPT and other Generative AI (GenAI) tools in late 2022, AI emerged from popular culture into everyday life with surprising speed for many people, young and old. Yet the GenAI tools that have emerged bear little resemblance to the AIs of popular culture. Instead, the emerge from the same contexts and cultures which have characterised big tech for two decades, driven by commercial imperatives and extractive logics (Crawford, 2021). With GenAI being integrated into a vast array of tools and platforms – from videogames and creative software to educational platforms and almost all social media – the rapid appearance and increasing impact of AI on children and young people demands urgent attention from researchers across a broad range of fields. Yet even in popular culture, AI tend to be normative, and in most cases, coded white (Cave & Dihal, Citation2020). In feature films the creators of AI are similarly white male scientists the vast majority of the time (Cave et al., Citation2023). With the public launch of ChatGPT and other Generative AI (GenAI) tools in late 2022, AI emerged from popular culture into everyday life with surprising speed for many people, young and old. Yet the GenAI tools that have emerged bear little resemblance to the AIs of popular culture. Instead, they emerge from the same contexts and cultures which have characterised big tech for two decades, driven by commercial imperatives and extractive logics (Crawford, Citation2021). With GenAI being integrated into a vast array of tools and platforms – from videogames and creative software to educational platforms and almost all social media – the rapid appearance and increasing impact of AI on children and young people demands urgent attention from researchers across a broad range of fields.

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    • Generative AI and children’s digital futures: New research challenges
      Leaver, Tama ; Srdarov, Suzanne (2025)
      From WALL·E (Stanton, Citation2008) to The Wild Robot (Sanders, Citation2024), children’s popular culture is filled with sympathetic, lovable, heroic artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic characters who make passionate ...
    • Generative AI Glitches: The Artificial Everything
      Srdarov, Suzanne ; Leaver, Tama (2024)
      Artificial Intelligence (AI) has existed in popular culture far longer than any particular technological tools that carry that name today (Leaver), and in part, for that reason, fantasies of AI being or becoming sentient ...
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      Leaver, Tama ; Srdarov, Suzanne (2025)
      GenAI tools are great at reproducing what probabilistically comes next, but these models produce all kinds of errors because there is no understanding, no intelligence. It is vital that these tools are used carefully and ...
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