ComAI Lecture: Gabriela Molina León on the Impact of Generative AI on Visualization Research and Practice
On May 5, 2026, Gabriela Molina León visited the ComAI Lecture series. A postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University (Denmark) working at the intersection of information visualization and human-computer interaction, she presented three projects on the role of generative AI in data visualization.
The first, Hey Dashboard!, introduced DIANA (Dashboard Interactive Assistant for Navigation and Analysis), an AI-based onboarding assistant for complex dashboards. Evaluation showed that as tasks became more demanding, participants increasingly drew on DIANA’s multimodal capabilities.
The second project, DuckDuckTalk, took “rubber ducking” as its starting point – but what if the duck could talk back? The team built agentic visualization systems in which Active Externalization Partners (AEPs) assume different roles and “personalities,” such as Expert Coder or Clarifier.
The third project, The Impact of Generative AI on Visualization Professionals: Positions, Experiences, and Abilities, drew on a survey of 56 visualization professionals. The results reveal a polarized field: generative AI is used mainly for programming tasks, while views on job security and professional futures tend toward skepticism.
Looking ahead, Molina León called for clearer guidelines along the lines of the EU AI Act, tool-agnostic approaches, and participatory methods for assessing AI’s advantages and risks.
Gabriela Molina León completed her PhD in 2024 at the University of Bremen, supervised by Andreas Breiter and Petra Isenberg, and co-organizes the Data Visualization Bremen Meetup – making her visit a homecoming of sorts.
6. May 2026
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp
ZeMKI, Center for Media, Communication and Information Research
University of Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67620
Assistent Mrs. Schober: +49 421 218-67603
E-mail: andreas.hepp@uni-bremen.de
