Hyerin Im



PROJECTS1. mistake makes meaning
    2. unspoken into the spoken
3. virfie
4. distortion studies
5. the cabinet of dr. algorithm
6. slight
7. spring rounds
8. promptcrafter

About
Writing

Unspoken into the spoken: Visualizing cultural nuances in intercultural romantic dyads through generative AI






What remains unspoken between people who love each other?

Intercultural couples may share a language while still struggling to articulate emotions shaped by different cultural norms, values, and expectations. Some experiences remain difficult to express because they are tacit, contextual, and embedded in ways of living that language alone cannot fully capture.

This project explores generative AI as a medium for giving form to these invisible differences. Through interviews, diaries, and participatory sessions with intercultural couples, personal experiences were translated into metaphorical AI-generated images that couples could encounter, interpret, and discuss together.

Rather than using AI to produce definitive representations of their experiences, the project embraces its ambiguity. The resulting images become reflective artifacts, creating space for multiple interpretations and allowing what was previously difficult to articulate to become visible, discussable, and open to reinterpretation.




How?


We created a multimodal AI probe that transforms personal reflections through a sequence of emotion, metaphor, and image. Rather than translating participants’ words directly into images, the process was designed to slow down interpretation, allowing meaning to shift as it moved between language, concept, and visual form.

    Generative pipeline for cultural reflection. 

    • (A) The Emotional Tag Generator (GPT-3.5) extracts up to ten nuanced tags from the user’s journal entry. 
    • (B) The Artistic Prompt Generator (GPT-4) transforms selected tags into metaphorical prompt candidates with [title, description, prompt]. 
    • (c) The Prompt Enhancer (GPT-4) refines the chosen prompt into a detailed painterly description. 
    • (D) The Image Generator (DALL·E 3) synthesizes the final 1024×1024 artwork.


    Study Design


    Formative Groundwork
    We examined academic literature and social narratives to identify recurring forms of culturally rooted tension in intimate relationships. These patterns became a starting point for designing prompts that could surface experiences often felt but difficult to articulate.    Six-Day Diary Study
    Seven intercultural couples lived with the probe for six days. Through daily reflections, emotional cues, metaphor-making, and AI-generated images, participants gradually externalized experiences that had previously remained implicit. The images were not intended as accurate representations, but as ambiguous artifacts through which partners could compare, question, and reinterpret their perspectives.
    Reflection & Dialogue
    In conversations following the study, participants described how the images helped them give form to implicit feelings, recognize culturally shaped differences, and encounter their relationships from alternative perspectives. Here, AI functioned less as an answer-giving system than as a space for interpretation between two people.



    2026

    Hyerin Im, Sungho Kim, Seungho Baek, Sunok Lee (Sogang Univ.)
    [International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction · 2026 (to appear)]






    ©2026 Hyerin Im