DigiKomm 2026
Utopias and dystopias of the digital society:
30 years of research on computer-mediated communication
September 16–18, 2026, Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin, Germany
Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Daily Overview |
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Session 02 (EN): Users’ Perspectives on Communicative/Generative AI Location: Main hall Session Chair: Esra Eres | |
| Presentation 4 | |
“AI can’t help it”: Users' perceptions and reactions to bias in generative AI Universität Würzburg, Deutschland Generative AI is increasingly used to produce media content, yet it often reproduces or amplifies existing social biases. To understand how users perceive such biases, evaluate them morally, and see their own and others' role in addressing them, we conducted 36 semi‑structured interviews with individuals differing in AI experience. Participants expressed ambivalent views: Many recognized that biased training data, probabilistic generation, and AI’s limited reflective capacities can lead to biased outputs, while AI was also perceived as neutral and bias attributed primarily to human creators and users. Moral evaluations centered on perceived agency and responsibility, with humans judged as more accountable than AI. At the same time, participants worried that AI could amplify stereotypes due to its capability to produce large amounts of media content. Responsibility for countering AI bias was attributed across micro‑ (users, developers), meso‑ (companies, platforms), and macrolevels (policy), with effective mitigation seen as requiring coordinated action. | |
