What is Everyone-Virtuoso-Everyday?

This Fellowship will drive a further ambitious leap forward in thinking and practice by seeking to shape—and create—new forms of AI material—algorithms, interfaces and embodiment—through the pursuit of answers to a complex question: in what ways can we make life better for all with interactive digital-physical objects that channel their physical, emotional, cognitive and even spiritual capabilities as they make sense of and choreograph their lives. Our approach is one then that sees AI innovation driven by a deep consideration of those energies.

We use the phrase Everyone-Virtuoso-Everyday (EVE) to express the form of the interactive AI systems we are interested in, the context of their use and their outcomes. The work will involve innovating and evaluating instruments that will be mastered by those who learn to use them. People will use these instruments to “play out” their rich lived experiences and through this create performances that platform deep engagements, insights and understandings for themselves and others, enhancing everyday needs for connection, contribution and contentment.

The EVE paradigm focuses on non-expert users in their everyday contexts. For example, an inspiring piece of work is the PeopleLens—a sight assistance service—to enable a boy, blind from birth, to orchestrate a playful social situation (see video below).

While one of the threats to the adoption or efficacy of AI is certainly the lack of consideration of what it means to be a human and a preoccupation or idolisation of the machine as a higher power, there is another growing concern that the Fellowship will also address. Through our work over the last decade we have come to call this the “Designed in California” problem; i.e., the predominant design ethos of digital systems is shaped by the global-California that includes mainstream, affluent, educated, privileged users across the world – from Mumbai to Swansea. In this Fellowship, then, wewill diversify and broaden the inclusion of voices less heard in AI innovation: those located in the Global South in locations such as the slums of Nairobi, townships of Cape Town and the favelas of Brazil. But you don’t have to go far from where the team is based—in Swansea—to find communities who are digitally excluded.

Events and Activities

A selection of the events, workshops and activities completed so far in the Fellowship.

  • December 2024

    Workshops held in Dharavi, Mumbai, examined daily routines, emotions and aspirations through activities such as s "day in your life", clay modelling and generative AI demonstrations. These sessions surfaced how residents understand and use technology, and what forms of interactive AI they see as meaningful in their lives.

  • February 2025

    Workshops in Nairobi with low resource communities explored experiences and expectations of interactive AI, followed by a summit at Microsoft Research Kenya. Participant feedback was highly positive, noting the value of inclusive, problem driven approaches, new ideas for future work and strong networking opportunities. Sessions and logistics were well received, with only minor suggestions for clarification and further practical insights. A fuller reflection is available in our Medium post, Beyond the Valley — Diversifying AI Innovation.

  • June 2025

    Early stage prototyping of new AI devices was carried out with participants in Dharavi and Swansea, using Wizard-of-Oz and co-design sessions to shape a generative video appliance and explore how communities might engage with public AI systems.

  • August 2025

    Evaluation studies of prototype devices were conducted in Dharavi and Swansea, involving in-situ deployments, observation of walk-up and use appliances, and analysis of the kinds of videos people created.

  • September 2025

    Matt Jones delivers his first Gresham Lecture, AI Will Be Your Overlord: Faster, Brighter, Better Than You?, examining public anxieties around AI and discussing how ideas of intelligence, sentience, perception and reasoning are being reconsidered in an AI centred world. The lecture also reflects on the social, economic and ethical implications of these developments.

    This lecture is part of the AI As Your Overlord: Assimilation, Acceptance or Resistance? lecture series.

  • October 2025

    Participation in the Science Festival Swansea, engaging visitors with project activities and emerging findings. A fuller reflection is available in our Medium post.

  • November 2025

    Matt Jones delivers his second Gresham Lecture, Becoming AI – Your Journey to Assimilation?, looking at how digital services are already making us machine-like; and, we explore how advanced AI-human fusions may undo our essential “humanness”.

    This lecture is part of the AI As Your Overlord: Assimilation, Acceptance or Resistance? lecture series.

  • February 2026

    Matt Jones delivers his third Gresham Lecture, Will You Be AI’s Pet?, exploring how AI may be gently domesticating human life, trading autonomy for comfort and care, and questioning what we gain and what we risk losing in the process.

    This lecture is part of the AI As Your Overlord: Assimilation, Acceptance or Resistance? lecture series.

  • March 2026

    Matt Jones delivers his fourth Gresham Lecture, Born Supremacy – AI as a Pale Shadow of Real Humanity, exploring what it means to remain deeply human in an AI-shaped world, asking how innovation reshapes agency, creativity, and freedom, and ultimately, how can human diversity inform better AI for all?

    This lecture is part of the AI As Your Overlord: Assimilation, Acceptance or Resistance? lecture series.

  • April 2026

    Matt Jones delivers his fifth Gresham Lecture, Taming AI, exploring how human-centred and responsible AI approaches can help ensure the social benefits of AI outweigh its risks, and how individuals and governments can thrive in an AI-shaped future.

    This lecture is part of the AI As Your Overlord: Assimilation, Acceptance or Resistance? lecture series.

Publications

Explore our publications on human-centred AI, creativity, and the future of human experience with technology.

Street Scenes: Public Appliances for GenAI Video in Informal Settlements

Generative AI is rapidly diffusing worldwide, yet access remains uneven. In informal settlements, barriers of cost, literacy and connectivity can exclude residents from AI-enabled self-expression. This paper presents Street Scenes: a public appliance for walk-up interaction with generative AI video in Dharavi, Mumbai. Inspired by the “Hole in the Wall” computers and previous Dharavi speech deployments, the system lets passers-by capture phone images, add voice-, button- and dial-based prompts, and generate short videos to view and leave locally. We report on ideation workshops, two Wizard-of-Oz prototypes and a 13-day in-situ deployment across Dharavi street locations. Findings show residents appropriating AI for play, self-presentation, small business promotion and community messaging, while also raising concerns about privacy, trust and misuse. We contribute: (1) a model for public AI appliances; (2) empirical insights into community engagement with generative AI; and, (3) design lessons for accessible, equitable and community-governed AI systems.

Less Redraw, More Explore: Suggestion and Completion for Sketch-to-Image

Sketch-to-image systems let users transform simple line drawings into realistic images, but current workflows force users into tedious redraw-regenerate cycles that slow creative exploration. We introduce two complementary interaction techniques that reduce iteration friction: AutoSketch, which extends partial sketches through AI-driven completions (pre-generation support), and BackSketch, which transforms generated images back into editable sketches at multiple abstraction levels (post-generation support). In a study with 30 participants, the results indicate that both techniques can improve exploration and expressiveness compared to a baseline sketch-to-image system, while AutoSketch also can increase users’ sense of agency and co-creation with the AI. We contribute new evidence that shifting support before or after generation opens distinct pathways for balancing user control and system initiative. Together, our results establish pre- and post-generation assistance as a design space for co-creative sketch-to-image systems.

The Research Team

Professor Matt Jones

Matt Jones is the EPSRC Fellow leading this Programme. He is deeply committed to inclusive, diverse and responsible interactive AI to this end he is the Chief Operating Officer of Responsible AI UK and on the leadership time of EPSRC’s Include+ Network. His work is inspired and driven through long-term engagement in the Global Souths.

Dr Gavin Bailey

Gavin is a research officer at Swansea University. He is the HCI researcher for this fellowship, exploring human-focused, inclusive and diverse interactive AI. Previously, Gavin worked alongside older adults, where self-powered sensors to encourage a growth mindset for ageing-well were developed.

Zeyu Zhao

Zeyu is a research officer at Swansea University, specialising in AI applications with a focus on speech technology and advancing speech recognition systems. As an active member of the speech recognition community, Zeyu contributes to the development and refinement of technologies that enhance human-computer interaction through voice. Currently, he is completing his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, where he has conducted in-depth research on speech recognition.

Jenna Hopkins

Jenna is a Project Officer, who has spent the last 10 years working on multiple UK and European funded projects. Jenna will be overseeing the financial and administrative aspects for EVE.

Professor Jennifer Pearson

Jen Pearson is a Professor of HCI and Director of Research for the Department of Computer Science in the Computational Foundry, Swansea University. Her primary research interest is centred around so-called emergent communities, learning from them and working with them to co-create digital interactive systems that better suit their contexts.

Professor Simon Robinson

Simon is Professor of Human-Centred Computing at the Computational Foundry at Swansea University. His research focuses on future-looking interaction design with and for people who have historically had limited technology access and inclusion.

Dr Thomas Reitmaier

Thomas is Lecturer in Computer Science at Swansea University. He works on the interdisciplinary UnMute/Ampilfy projects to co-create spoken language interactions with communities of minority language speakers who are currently digitally ‘unheard’.

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