AI Chatbot for Kids: A Participatory Approach to AI Literacy

AI Chatbot for Kids empowers middle school students to become co-creators of artificial intelligence by engaging them in participatory design and hands-on exploration of how AI systems work. Through think-aloud activities, collaborative prototyping, and iterative chatbot development, adolescents learn prompt literacy, ethical reasoning, and how intelligent systems construct information. By centering youth perspectives, the project addresses a critical gap in AI literacy education while also helping young users move from passively accepting AI outputs to actively questioning, shaping, and understanding them. This project will produce a child-friendly chatbot prototype and new insights into how adolescents conceptualize and interact with AI, advancing more equitable and developmentally appropriate approaches to K–12 AI education.

What the Project Does
The project brings adolescents into the design process of a child-friendly AI chatbot. Through creative, interactive sessions, students learn:
1.) How AI systems generate responses
2.) How prompts influence system behavior
3.) How bias, values, and ethics emerge in AI
4.) How to design and evaluate a youth-centered chatbot

By co-designing the chatbot, students turn abstract AI concepts into meaningful experiences of creation and reflection.