Bringing Emotions to Life with AI Visualization

Understanding the emotional journey someone goes through when living with a disease is the first step to truly addressing their needs. This exploration is critically important to life science companies as they strive to develop innovative therapies and improve the patient experience. Although emotional expression might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “generative AI,” that’s exactly how a team at Real Chemistry harnessed the technology with a group of people who have a rare blood disorder.

In individual sessions, a small, multi-disciplinary team at Real Chemistry met with eight people one at a time to prompt them with questions about their feelings, themselves, their memories and living with a blood disorder. They were asked: “If your health were a place, where would it be?” “What song represents your relationship with the blood disorder?” “What is the color of comfort?”

At the same time, generative AI specialists from Real Chemistry’s scientific visualization team acted as “AI stenographers,” entering the responses into an AI visualization tool while enhancing the input in real-time using terms designed to polish the image quality.

Images: Generative AI can give form to even the most abstract terms, such as "hope," "confusion" and "longing,” making it an interesting tool to facilitate expression.

Some people reminisced about their childhood, places they used to go to feel safe, or the feeling they had when they finally had a treatment that allowed them to explore the world. The result was a dreamlike sequence of beautiful images – some somber, some humorous – that created a visual record of each person’s journey.

The images have been curated for an upcoming patient advocacy event where they will be displayed as an art installation. Attendees will be able to create their own artwork using an interactive, custom-designed generative AI experience.

Generative AI is advancing at a dizzying pace, and it can be difficult to filter the noise from the signal. It seems as though every two weeks there is a new version of a selfie robot or automatic essay writer – as well as simultaneous praise and criticism of the technology. Not to mention the debates about job replacement versus new opportunities, unethical biases, copyright infringement versus opt-in model training. Although micro-breakthroughs will likely give way to more established tools that are integrated into typical workflows, and regulations will eventually catch up with capabilities, it’s important that we allow our minds to venture beyond what’s right in front of us. It’s easy to limit our predictions to how generative AI will maximize productivity or eliminate rote tasks, but what if it could also help make us better humans?

For this early experiment, the team at Real Chemistry wanted to see what would happen if we connected automated image generation to emotions and memories. The result was an experience that was moving for everyone involved. Witnessing each person close their eyes, use their creativity to put feelings into words, and delight as their words became images was an unexpected surprise. The project served as a reminder of the potential of AI to augment – rather than replace – our abilities and help us better understand and connect with each other.

Throughout this post and following is a glimpse of what the future of medicine could look like with AI-augmented empathy.