A group of 12 seniors sit in a brightly lit room inside the Rideau-Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre. Their task is simple: together, the group must reimagine the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
The seniors bounce ideas off each other to craft the tale, creating a laughter-filled environment while combatting the effects of social isolation that seniors often experience.
“What about changing her name to Li’l Red?” one participant suggested.
“Let’s give her a malicious glint in her eye,” another added.
But the seniors are doing more than just crafting a story. Once the tale is complete, the group brings their story to life using an AI text-to-image software.
As the software’s visualization fills the screen, smiles animate the room as the seniors revel in their creations and excitedly share their favourite parts with each other.
Over the last year and a half, this dedicated and creative group of seniors has worked together to create a calendar and a colouring book filled with their own AI-generated images.
“As a community resource centre doing seniors’ programming, you’d think we’d be the last place to see something like AI being implemented,” said Luc Lalande, innovator-in-residence at the community resource centre.
“But I think, if anything, this project is showing that technologies applied in a creative way and ethically can generate a lot of good and promote joy.”
Lalande said the group’s eagerness to experiment with AI and show off their creative side has been encouraging.
“We often put seniors in a stereotype that they’re not creative and not imaginative,” he said. “But it’s just that we never put them in a situation where they can exercise their imagination and creativity.”
For participant Isabelle Villeneuve, 69, the activity is an important way to bring seniors together. She said she’s witnessed the impacts of social isolation among seniors in her building, especially for those who are physically unable to leave their apartments without assistance.
“People are very isolated and they’re alone. They have nobody,” she said. “Now it’s like a breath of fresh air to have others to connect with.”
To reimagine Little Red Riding Hood, the group experimented with readingclub.ai, a brand-new software launched two weeks prior. When prompted, the AI generates additional lines of the story and creates images based on the final product.
Alexis Diamond, software co-founder and professor at the online institution Minerva University was present at the session and guided the seniors on how to use the software.
“We are trying to get people to see how to make our app as useful and fun as possible, so we see seniors as a really good potential user because they’re connected to young people, and they have lots of stories,” Diamond said.
“When you help seniors feel good, you feel good.”
The group is now working toward generating images to form a series of storyboards, which they plan to display at the community resource centre’s upcoming Intergenerational Day event on June 1.
To ensure everyone’s voices and perspectives are included, Lalande said he has started incorporating elements from non-Western fairy tales into the group’s portfolio. Recently, he introduced Haitian folklore characters Ti Malice and Tonton Bouki into a story to engage the group’s Haitian participants.
Lalande said he also plans to bring in Inuit elders in the coming weeks to share stories important to their community, which the group can then bring to life in a series of images.
“I don’t want to just do Western fairy tales that we all know,” Lalande said. I think it’s a great platform for cross-cultural storytelling.”
Despite the predominantly negative focus on AI, Lalande said its ability to facilitate community building when used in a person-centred way should also be celebrated.
“When you centre people at the focus and the AI is enabling stuff rather than AI being the focus, good things happen,” he said.
Featured image by Owen Spillios-Hunter/the Charlatan.
