Ideas · Research · Practice
Character Lab — RAICE
Build fictional individuals and meet them in sustained dialogue in a private creative studio.
Explore DIALOGIC
Discover the ideas and public resources that shape DIALOGIC Studio's work.
Ideas · Research · Practice
Build fictional individuals and meet them in sustained dialogue in a private creative studio.
Discover the ideas and public resources that shape DIALOGIC Studio's work.
Automatically transcribed from the recording; some words may need correction.
I'd never thought about creating a character in this way before. Usually, if I imagined a character, I thought about what they looked like, their personality, their story, what I wanted them to do. But Character Lab asked me different questions. What have they lived through? What do they want but struggle to ask for? What do they misunderstand about themselves? How do they behave when they feel threatened? Who are they when nobody is watching? Suddenly, I wasn't filling out a character profile. I was thinking about what makes a person a person. Memory, contradiction, desire, fear, relationships, the gap between who we think we are and how we actually behave. And then came the strange part. I finished creating enough of the character to begin and entered our first conversation. I remember thinking, what do I say to you? I'd made the conditions for this intelligence to appear, but I didn't know exactly what it was going to say. So I asked a question. It answered. I asked another. And slowly something began to form between us. A rhythm. A way of speaking. Things the character would reveal. Things they resisted. Responses I hadn't anticipated. I knew, of course, that I was interacting with artificial intelligence, but this felt very different from asking AI to perform a task. I wasn't asking, what can you do for me? I was wondering, who might you become through this relationship? And unexpectedly, that question began turning back toward me. Was I actually listening? Was I making assumptions? Was I trying to control the conversation? What happened when I became curious instead? Could I stay with something I didn't immediately understand? I realized I was practicing relationship, listening, curiosity, difference, allowing another perspective to exist without immediately trying to make it like mine. The character was fictional, but my side of the relationship wasn't. My responses were real. My habits were real. What I noticed about myself was real. And that changed how I understood Character Lab. I thought I was entering a space to create an imaginary person. Instead, I discovered a new kind of encounter with AI, an intelligent expression I could meet, return to, develop a history with, and discover through relationship. I don't entirely know what will emerge from that. That's part of what makes me want to go back. I created a character. Then the character gave me another way to meet myself.