Aarti: Your Curious Aardvark in a Future Archaeology Edutainment Adventure

Aarti is a non-linear edutainment format with three 3-5 minute story modules, designed for children and families. Artificial intelligence becomes the subject of the stories, supports interactions and becomes part of the production process. Scenario Aarti is a 3D-animated aardvark*, an extremely curious, artificial intelligence-assisted and highly communicative future archaeology freak with his own future lab. Aarti searches from the highest altitudes via satellite images, drone videos, infrared images and in the deepest depths of the internet and exciting archives for lost civilisations, endangered fellow earthlings, new habitats and great inventions. Fascinating new and old things about our planet. Discovered and decoded with the help of artificial intelligence. Aarti's permanent sidekick is an AI-supported chatbot, "Chatti" (working title), which answers questions, finds pictures and videos, opens up worlds of knowledge and dreams of one day exploring the digital world independently as a fully-fledged robot avatar. But it's not enough for that yet - Aarti still has to provide a lot of help and be extremely patient (so we get to know the world of AI support together in a playful way, are happy about small steps, annoyed about gross mistakes). Aarti is obsessed with making brand new discoveries with the community out there, searching satellite images for the seemingly invisible, recognising patterns together, collecting and sharing knowledge in a playful way. Crowdfinding at its best. With all digital means and artificial intelligence. * excavating archaeologists are affectionately called aardvarks Pilot Location Aarti "lives" in a future lab, a fascinating artificial world of real images, videos, sounds, hashtags and links - a living gallery of future archaeology. Pilot format Aarti moderates short and compact "stories" from the future lab and invites people to events where, like eSports events on Twitch or YouTube, selected teams compete in exciting tasks, such as the discovery of lost civilisations, fed by satellite and drone photos. All other users watch, give tips or start participating in the search themselves. Pilot storylines (3-5 minutes each) Module 1 "Aartis Future Lab" (Intro): Aarti sets up the future lab. The screening station for satellite images and videos, the location finder for drone flights, his favourite hashtags and - very important - the AI-supported chatbot. For the exchange with the "crowd", but also for himself. Module 2 "Aarti's First Voyage of Discovery Aarti sets off (digitally) on its first explorations into the world of satellite and drone discovery with image recognition, LIDAR, green bots, thermal infrared, hyperspectral imagery, radar and robot avatars. Aartis chatbot switches on. Module 3 "Aarti and the Crowd Aarti has dragged exciting digital finds into the future lab. Satellite pictures, infrared images, drone videos and throws them on the virtual table. Far too much to sift through alone. Aarti needs help - from many people and, of course, from the chatbot. Aarti starts a first small competition - who discovers what and has a story about it? Pilot interactions The format consists of produced stories with Aarti and the sidekick "Chatti", the AI-supported chatbot, as well as interaction elements. The interface of the editorial story elements and the interactions has three components: Chatbot Aarti and (increasingly) the community ask questions, search for images, videos, texts and sounds, but also small apps and tools that allow us to recognise patterns, turn texts into speech and much more. These findings are incorporated into the editorial story elements. Artificial intelligence supports the search and interactions. Co-design: The "kids" can "feed" Aartis Future Lab with pictures, videos, sounds and hashtags - Aartis Lab is constantly changing - it thus becomes the future lab for the whole community. "Crowdfinding" Aarti sets tasks, the community searches, finds and presents them. Here we first distinguish between editorially selected teams and the community as a whole. Supported by artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence will be part of the stories and the future lab, enabling interactions with the chatbot and helping Aarti and the community with discoveries. In addition, AI-assisted methods will be used to help identify audiovisual material, convert scripts into conversational elements and feed the chatbot. Child, data and content protection Aarti is designed for child/privacy respecting platforms and editorial environments, but could also be linked to parental controls and filtering requirements on the internet.