Projects

• Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp

Taking historical developments at Stanford University and MIT as well as today’s developments at OpenAI (GPT-4) and Aleph Alpha (Luminous) as examples, P1 focuses on ComAI’s pioneer communities: groups who create “social horizons” for future development through their imaginative and experimental practices. P1 combines a historical perspective on earlier pioneer communities and tech movements as (…)

• Prof. Dr. Rainer Malaka

With the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) and their adaptation to human-computer communication based on human feedback, users are increasingly expecting human-like interaction from ComAIs. However, these models designed specifically for human-computer communication face mainly two problems: First, they rely only on the data they are trained with, which is often biased and insufficient. (…)

• Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz

In this project we trace the juridification in the field of ComAI. We focus on the legal frameworks for conversational bots (specifically ChatGPT) and social bots (specifically on X/Twitter and Facebook), first, from the perspective of communications law, and second, emerging AI regulation. The project centers around the legal situation in Germany, reconstructing basic concepts (…)

• Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach

In this project we investigate private ordering as one dimension of ComAI’s sociomaterial constitution with regard to corporate communication and policies in the context of public controversies, focusing on Germany, UK and US. The project thus investigates the ways in which corporate strategies and product policies of companies such as Alphabet, Amazon, and OpenAI as (…)

• Prof. Dr. Wiebke Loosen

The project investigates ComAI’s involvement in journalism by analyzing the challenge of journalistic autonomy at the interactional, organizational, and societal levels. We assume that journalism is particularly concerned with relationships between humans and machines within societal communication, a relation that this is also relevant to self-reflection and the appropriation of ComAI in the journalistic field. (…)

• Prof. Dr. Cornelius Puschmann /
• Dr. Gregor Wiedemann

Political deliberation on the internet is widely seen as potentially vital to the larger public debate about fundamental societal challenges by virtue of its speed, breadth and openness. At the same time, debates on social media platforms are often polarized and plagued by problems such as incivility, lack of factuality and one-sidedness of arguments. The (…)

• Prof. Dr. Michaela Pfadenhauer

The project investigates the emergence of artificial companionship-apps (e.g., Replika, Nomi.ai, Paradot) in the personal sphere which corresponds to the changing nature of companionship in the twenty-first century. Since these apps draw on professional expertise in the counselling field, we examine artificial companionship with regard to already existing companionship services. With grief and day-to-day life (…)

• Prof. Dr. Juliane Jarke

ComAI is increasingly presented as a solution to the care needs of an ageing population, particularly in the face of reduced funding for healthcare systems and a shortage of healthcare professionals. These technologies are also promoted as tools for “healthy ageing”, a policy objective aimed at enhancing the wellbeing of older adults. Within this framework, (…)

• Prof. Dr. Andreas Breiter

In education, particularly in higher education, technologies have a long history of improving learning and teaching. Most recently GPT-4 and other LLMs are seen both in media discourses and in politics as a “game changer”, confronting higher education with societal expectations and fears. In the light of this, the project will address how learning and (…)

• Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp /
• Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach /
• Prof. Dr. Wiebke Loosen /
• Prof. Dr. Cornelius Puschmann /
• Dr. Gregor Wiedemann

The ComAI Research Space as part of the Coordination Project serves to coordinate the parts of the data collection that are carried out jointly to make data available to the projects and to create an open repository. Its focus is to investigate media and communication technologies of communicative AI in the process of their emergence. (…)