CARTA / Chaplin School Mini-Challenge:
AI + Ethical Storytelling in Location-Based Entertainment
October 15 – November 15, 2025
$500 Prize to the Winner
How can AI advance a creative product as a whole—not just as a tool, but as a collaborator in storytelling, design, and experience?
We invite you to submit a one-page PDF that explores your most creative ideas for how ethical, creative AI can transform Location-Based Entertainment (LBE) experiences.
What to Submit
- A single-page PDF (include the title of your project, your name and PID)
- Up to 200 words of text — plus an AI footnote explaining which AI you used and how (not counted in the original 200-word text)
- Include imaginative images to help express your idea
- Multiple submissions welcome
- Teams of students welcome
- By submitting, you grant permission for CARTA to display or promote your idea and name in future showcases.
Evaluation Criteria
- Creative and ethical storytelling
- Innovative use of AI
- Extraordinary use of LBE techniques
What is LBE?
Location-Based Entertainment are immersive, physical experiences outside the home, from theme parks, cruise ships, hotels, and escape rooms to VR arcades and digital art installations. LBE connects story, technology, and place to create memorable, shared experiences.
What is an Extraordinary LBE technique?
- Synergy between story, tech, and place—where each element enhances the others.
- Immersive design that transforms physical environments into emotionally resonant experiences.
- Innovative use of AI to personalize, adapt, or deepen the interaction.
- Ethical storytelling that prompts reflection, inclusivity, and responsible engagement.
Example
- AI-guided Museum Journey: Imagine entering a museum where every visitor’s experience is uniquely shaped by their emotions, curiosity, and pace of discovery. An AI-powered system, connected through a mobile app and optional wearable, senses each visitor’s engagement, surprise, or reflection through subtle cues such as facial expression, gaze direction, or heart rate. As the visitor moves through the galleries, the AI dynamically adjusts the order, lighting, soundscape, and narrative tone of the exhibition, slowing down in moments of fascination, offering deeper context when curiosity peaks, or skipping ahead when attention fades. Over time, the system learns from thousands of visitors, identifying collective emotional patterns that inform how future exhibitions are designed and curated.
Yet this evolving system raises important ethical questions: Who owns the emotional data gathered from visitors? How should consent be structured when affective responses are tracked in real time? Could personalization reinforce bias or diminish shared cultural meaning? The project invites visitors to consider the tension between immersion and surveillance, between being known and being free. Ultimately, the AI-guided museum journey becomes not just an exhibition, but a living dialogue about creativity, consent, and the future of storytelling in an age of intelligent systems.
AI Footnote example explaining which AI tools you used (example: ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc.) and how you used them (for narrative development, concept visualization):
Concept developed using ChatGPT (OpenAI) for narrative development and DALL-E for concept visualization.
This mini-challenge is hosted by the CARTA Dean’s Creative and Ethical AI Initiative in partnership with the Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, empowering students, faculty, and partners to explore how responsible AI transforms immersive storytelling and builds trust across all of our disciplines.
FIU faculty members: Travis Cloyd, Elizabeth Marsh, Sharifa Wilkinson, and John Stuart.
Interested in the future of entertainment? Check out FIU’s unique D.R.E.A.M.S. (DIGITAL RESEARCH ARTS MEDIA SCIENCES) Program!