DeepThInk: Designing and probing human-AI co-creation in digital art therapy

Art therapy has been an essential form of psychotherapy to facilitate psychological well-being, which has been promoted and transformed by recent technological advances into digital art therapy. However, the potential of digital technologies has not been fully leveraged; especially, applying AI technologies in digital art therapy is still under-explored. In this paper, we propose an AI-infused art-making system, DeepThInk, to investigate the potential of introducing a human-AI co-creative process into art therapy, by collaborating with five experienced registered art therapists over ten months. DeepThInk offers a range of tools which can lower the expertise threshold for art-making while improving users’ creativity and expressivity. We gathered the insights of DeepThInk through expert reviews and a two-part user evaluation with both synchronous and asynchronous therapy setups. This longitudinal iterative design process helped us derive and contextualize design principles of human-AI co-creation for art therapy, shedding light on future design in relevant domains. •A longitudinal iterative design process with five professional art therapists.•A novel AI-infused digital art-making system DeepThInk.•Results of an evaluation that assists the understanding of AI as a material in art therapy.