iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The Autotelic Interaction Research Group is part of @aalto.fi @csaalto.bsky.social, a unique hub for world-class research and home of @ellis.eu institute Finland! Next to Helsinki, we're well connected internationally and Finland has been ranked "happiest country on earth" for many years.

autotelic.science

Autotelic Interaction Research | Aalto University

Supporting self-directed behaviour in AI, people, and in their interaction.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Additional ❗2-y postdoc opportunity❗ to work with the AIR group (www.autotelic.science) and me @aalto.fi on EITHER (1) (computational) intrinsic motivation / unsupervised RL OR (2) creativity x AI, e.g. through a HCI, CogSci or Psych lens. DL: October 4th, 2026 at 11:59 PM (23:59 UTC+03:00)

autotelic.science

Autotelic Interaction Research | Aalto University

Supporting self-directed behaviour in AI, people, and in their interaction.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

6/6 Bonus finding: participants who were more intrinsically motivated also felt substantially more ownership over their stories. Exploratorily, the prompting × editing effect was strongest at lower intrinsic motivation and attenuated as intrinsic motivation increased.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

5/ Key finding #2: every AI-assisted workflow still produced significantly & substantially lower ownership than writing without AI, even when participants could iteratively prompt and edit. With AI writing tools, one-shot delegation can be particularly harmful when ownership matters.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

4/ This suggests prompting and editing can provide partially substitutable routes to ownership: both let users invest themselves in and exert control over the text, but at different stages of the writing process. More interaction was not simply additive!

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

3/ Key finding #1 = an interaction: editing strongly increased ownership after single-prompt generation (Δ = 0.89), but much less after iterative prompting (Δ = 0.27). Iterative prompting thus supported psychological ownership mainly when editing was unavailable.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

2/ We ran a preregistered experiment (N = 273) in which participants wrote short creative stories either (A) entirely without AI, or with (B) AI using single-prompt vs iterative prompting, crossed with (C) whether they could directly edit the generated text afterwards. We evaluate A+BxC.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

1/ When does AI-assisted writing still feel like _your_ writing? How do interaction choices matter? Our new study @aalto.fi @csaalto.bsky.social examines how 2 everyday choices, iterative prompting and direct editing, shape psychological ownership of AI-assisted writing: doi.org/10.1016/j.ch...

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

The Autotelic Interaction Research Group (AIR; www.autotelic.science) is part of @aalto.fi @csaalto.bsky.social, a unique hub of world-class artistic and scientific research and @ellis.eu institute Finland! Picture: Tania Candiani - Subterra (Subterranean), 2025. Helsinki Biennial.

autotelic.science

Autotelic Interaction Research | Aalto University

Supporting self-directed behaviour in AI, people, and in their interaction.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Critical at its core, the ACAI project seeks to identify alternative and sustainable paths to "mainstream" creative AI. Rather than optimizing systems to replicate established human aesthetics or processes, we investigate the conditions under which AI might operate as a genuinely creative agent.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

The postdoc will be working in close interaction with a media artist, the PI and the wider AIR group. They will also be invited to work with and travel to our fantastic world-leading collaborators Tom Froese (OIST), Takashi Ikegami (University of Tokyo), and Jon McCormack (Monash University)!

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

2-year postdoc to work on Autotelic Creative AI (ACAI): an opportunity for theoretical research on the foundations of creativity in AI and living beings (e.g. agency, autonomy, value grounding) + time to work on your own ideas fitting with the group's interests. DL: 11.9. bit.ly/4hEpIZz

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

(3/3) A half-day, hybrid event at CHIPLAY26 in York, UK / Mon Nov 2nd, 2026. Co-organizers: Guo Freeman @guofreeman.bsky.social, Carlos Toxtli @carlostoxtli.bsky.social, Ruchi Panchanadikar, Yang Hu, Julian Frommel, Regan Mandryk @reganmandryk.bsky.social and Alena Denisova @sevenfridays.bsky.social

lnkd.in

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

(2/3) In this interactive workshop, we invite you to build a community and a proactive approach to collectively reflect on and envision GenAI’s evolving role in shaping the future of creative work in gaming. Please submit a position statement and bio (max 200 w each): forms.gle/rmh99ajU5kUL...

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

(1/3) Join us in discussing AI's impact on how digital games can be designed, produced, experienced, and studied! Applications to our hybrid CHIPLAY26 workshop "Envisioning and Co-Creating GenAI for Future Creative Workers in Gaming" now open / DL Sep 21, 2026! sites.google.com/view/chiplay...

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Are you a junior researcher (Master's+) working on #computationalcreativity? I'm organising the Early Career Symposium (ECS) at ICCC2016 - join us to present and discuss your projects and career questions. DL for extended abstract: May 15th. More info: computationalcreativity.net/iccc26/early...

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Interested in interpretative qualitative research synthesis as a methodology for HCI research or in GenAI's impact on game development specifically? Seek me out at #chi2026 / presentation Tue morning: programs.sigchi.org/chi/2026/pro...

programs.sigchi.org

Conference Programs

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Interested in applying? Now is the time! DL: Fri 3.4.2026. The job ads have now been updated with a Q&A section, collecting many questions that I've received thus far.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

(7/) We contextualise the adoption of GenAI within larger trends in game industry & provide rigorous methodological detail and reflexivity on meta-ethnography as a yet underexplored method in HCI.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

(6/) NB: our findings derive from studies scattered over time -> must not be understood as a snapshot of the present. We recommend using them, combined w the identified research gaps, to guide up-to-date research within the specific context of interest for advancing policy or practice.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

(5/) What makes adoption fragile: risks around originality, ownership, labour precarity & need for provenance to be embedded in workflows. We argue governance is not an optional overhead; GenAI reshapes authorship and can drive stylistic convergence if left unchecked.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

(4/) Efficiency claims are contested & conditional: speed-ups are task-/phase-dependent, and often eroded by configuration, verification, and integration overhead. Pipeline fit is real bottleneck: current tools rarely fit production requirements w/o adapters, acceptance criteria & evaluation gates.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

(3/) Existing qualitative studies suggest that GenAI’s strongest value is upstream: ideation and exploratory prototyping, not end-to-end authorship. Across studies, the shared conclusion is that systems broaden option spaces but humans still frame, judge, and steer what becomes “the work”.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

(2/) A consistent finding across the corpus is that human-in-the-loop refinement is the production norm. Generative outputs behave like provisional artefacts: teams iterate, curate, correct, and integrate, and prompting becomes progressive specification work rather than a one-shot query.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

(1/) Accepted to CHI’26: 1st qualitative research synthesis on the impact of GenAI - here on game development (2020-25). Core contributions: meta-ethnography integrating 10 studies -> 9 themes + industry context + recommendations for practice, research & governance. doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.11898

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

A fantastic opportunity to join a creative, open-minded research group just outside Helsinki in the happiest country on earth + to work with fantastic researchers worldwide, e.g. collaborators Tom Froese (OIST), @jon-mcc.bsky.social (Monash University) & Takashi Ikegami (University of Tokyo).

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Jobs! The Autotelic Interaction Research Group is looking for (1) creative practitioners and (2) theory researchers to work on "Autotelic Creative Artificial Intelligence" (ACAI): (1) PhD in Creative Practices (2+2 years): lnkd.in/dPBG47rM (2) Postdoctoral Researcher (2 years): lnkd.in/dMisM_bf

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

(6/6) A collaboration with Niki Pennanen and @robinwelsch.bsky.social, complementing our prior work on robots here: dl.acm.org/doi/full/10..... Supported by The Finnish Doctoral Program Network in Artificial Intelligence (AI-DOC) & Research Council of Finland (371202). @aalto.fi @csaalto.bsky.social

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

(5/) Further analyses in paper + qualitative comments highlight many differences in how the process was perceived. Design implication: process visualizations are not a universal “creativity boost” button. They can backfire for some audiences unless paired with context or adapted to user background.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

(4/) The story gets interesting with individual differences: Amongst others, AI literacy moderated the effect with lower literacy -> process tended to lower creativity ratings; higher literacy -> process tended to raise them.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

(3/) Prolific participants were UK census-representative (N=298+295). The headline Study 1 result: process visibility did NOT increase perceived creativity on average. Study 2 sought to “help” the process animation by adding a tutorial on diffusion: still no tutorial/PE/interaction effects!

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

(2/) We studied this in two preregistered online studies with text-to-image outputs (Stable Diffusion), manipulating Perceptual Evidence (PE): Product (final image only) vs Product+Process (30s denoising animation, then the final image).

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

(1/) Does visualizing an AI’s image generation process make people judge it as more “creative”? Our ACM IUI'26 paper shows that the "who" of the observer can matter more than what the interface reveals. Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

5/5 Collaboration between @aalto.fi and @oistedu.bsky.social, supported by Aalto Science Institute (ASci) and the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT).

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

4/5 This work contributes to a young research agenda seeking to understand creativity beyond the realm of humans or highly developed animals. We argue for the SO model as a fascinating candidate to study the effect of learning on creativity from the bottom up - in life as it is and as it could be.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

3/5 More specifically, we demonstrate that modifying the SO model learning parameters gives rise to four different regimes that can account for both creative products and inconclusive outcomes, thus providing a framework for studying and understanding the creative potential of learning systems.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

2/5 Developed to model complex adaptive systems in ALife and advocated as a candidate for minimal agency, the Self-Optimization (SO) model can be considered as the 3rd operational mode of the classical Hopfield Network, leveraging the power of associative memory to enhance optimization performance.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

1/5 Now in Artificial Life: our research on the creativity of unsupervised learning! Core finding: a simple model of attractor networks with Hebbian learning is sufficient to constitute a (minimal) creative process, yielding creative products as solutions of the optimization. doi.org/10.1162/ARTL...

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Reposted by Christian Guckelsberger

Karoliina Snell @ksnell.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Read the blog of the Ethics Advisory Board of Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence about the need to incorporate training and discussions in AI ethics in the AI-related doctoral student's curriculum. fcai.fi/eab-blog/eth... Written together with colleagues listed in the comments.

fcai.fi

Ethics is not a 15-minute box-ticking exercise — FCAI

Responsible AI development requires continuous, critical ethical thinking from everyone involved in creating technology.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

4/4 Locally, we're part of a rich AI research ecosystem, including the Finnish Center of AI (FCAI), Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) @icthiit.bsky.social and the Finnish @ellis.eu institute, a world-class research hub in AI and machine learning.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

3/4 You can work w/travel to our fantastic collaborators Natasha Jaques @natashajaques.bsky.social (Washington U./DeepMind), Sebastian Deterding @codingconduct.cc (Imperial College), Christoph Salge @christophsalge.bsky.social & Daniel Polani (UH), & Julian Togelius @togelius.bsky.social (NYU)!

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

2/4 The AIR group (www.autotelic.science) embraces diversity in research, thought and identity and has a track record of research on (computational) intrinsic motivation, bridging between AI, Psychology and Cognitive Science. Aalto University is 15 min away from Helsinki and surrounded by nature.

autotelic.science

Autotelic Interaction Research | Aalto University

Supporting self-directed behaviour in AI, people, and in their interaction.

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

5/5 🤝 A collaboration between Aalto University @aalto.fi and Imperial College @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social, generously supported by the Research Council of Finland and Helsinki Institute for Information Technology @icthiit.bsky.social

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

4/5 📆 Catch us in person: We will be presenting this work first at RLDM @rldmdublin2025.bsky.social in June (in person) and then at CogSci @cogscisociety.bsky.social in July (likely remote). Please join us for exciting discussions of this research and the directions in which we take it next!

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Christian Guckelsberger @creativeendvs.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

3/5 🤔 Why it matters: By matching psychological theories with AI models, we foster transparency and testability in motivation research. More generally, our work can support a cycle of theory development by inspiring new AI models and experimental designs, which can then be used to refine the theory.

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