Generative AI imagery for "How does GenAI ‘see’ climate change (and back again): Exploring the challenges and opportunities of GenAI for climate visual journalism"

We make available the imagery produced by a set of generative AI agents on a range of themes in the general area of climate communication, studied in the paper "How does GenAI ‘see’ climate change (and back again): Exploring the challenges and opportunities of GenAI for climate visual journalism".<b>Abstract</b><b> </b>Visualising climate change is a challenge for journalists. Climate images can be clichéd, disconnected and even divergent from information communicated by other modalities (such as text); and can represent a missed opportunity to engage audiences. Generative AI could potentially provide transformative opportunities to visually illustrate climate news. However, risks may include reinforcing stereotyped, inaccurate or unethical visual content, with knock-on effects on audience trust and public informedness.  Working as a transdisciplinary team of social scientists, computer scientists and journalists, we co-produced three experiments designed to represent a spectrum of potential future engagement with generative AI technology. We prompted five generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Microsoft Copilot, Generative AI by Getty Images) with seven typical climate news topics (climate change, flooding, heatwave, migration, Net Zero, COP26, nature) via three prompt styles (simple, detailed, story).  These results indicate that there are substantial barriers for generative AI tools to create meaningful images for climate-related stories. We reflect on the implications of these experiments for journalists and others concerned with climate visual communication.