"Grillz on a hijabi": Intersectional Identities in Fostering Critical AI Literacy
Jaemarie Solyst, Chloe Fong, Faisal Nurdin, Rotem Landesman, R. Benjamin Shapiro
TL;DR
The paper investigates how intersectional identities, particularly Black Muslim teen girls, can develop critical AI literacy through a culturally responsive, fashion-centered learning experience using GenAI. In a three-day, open-ended workshop, participants used fashion design to surface GenAI affordances and limitations, revealing biases, representation gaps, and the socio-ethical dimensions of AI outputs. Through iterative prompting and critical reflection, they leveraged funds of knowledge to critique AI behavior and imagine more just, identity-affirming technologies, contributing to designing inclusive AI literacy experiences. The study advances understanding of how creativity, identity, and culturally responsive pedagogy can foster deeper, agency-driven engagement with AI, with implications for curriculum design and tooling that center marginalized youth. It highlights the value of open-ended, youth-led explorations for surfacing socio-technical insights and guiding responsible AI development.
Abstract
As AI increasingly saturates our daily lives, it is crucial that youth develop skills to critically use and assess AI systems and envision better alternatives. We apply theories from culturally responsive computing to design and study a learning experience meant to support Black Muslim teen girls in developing critical literacy with generative AI (GenAI). We investigate fashion design as a culturally-rich, creative domain for youth to apply GenAI and then reflect on GenAI's socio-ethical aspects in relation to their own intersectional identities. Through a case study of a three-day, voluntary informal education program, we show how fashion design with GenAI exposed affordances and limitations of current GenAI tools. As the girls used GenAI to create realistic depictions of their dream fashion collections, they encountered socio-ethical limitations of AI, such as biased models and malfunctioning safety systems that prohibited their generation of outputs that reflected their creative ideas, bodies, and cultures. Discussions anchored in the phenomenology of impossible creative realization supported participants' development of critical AI literacy and descriptions of how preferable, identity-affirming technologies would behave. Our findings contribute to the field's growing understanding of how computing education experience designs linking creativity and identity can support critical AI literacy development.