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Workshop paper accepted: One Spell Fits All: A Generative AI Game as a Tool for Research in AI Creativity and Sustainable Design

Authors: Tom Tucek, Kseniia Harshina, Georgia Samaritaki (University of Amsterdam), and Dipika Rajesh (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Abstract:
This paper presents “One Spell Fits All”, an AI-native game prototype where the player, playing as a witch, solves villagers’ problems using magical conjurations. We show how, beyond being a standalone game, “One Spell Fits All” could serve as a research platform to explore several key areas in AI-driven and AI-native game design. These areas include AI creativity, user experience in predominantly AI-generated content, and the energy efficiency of locally running versus cloud-based AI models. By leveraging smaller, locally running generative AI models, including LLMs and diffusion models for image generation, the game dynamically generates and evaluates content without the need for external APIs or internet access, offering a sustainable and responsive gameplay experience. This paper explores the application of LLMs in narrative video games, outlines a game prototype’s design and mechanics, and proposes future research opportunities that can be explored using the game as a platform.

EXAG ’24: Experimental AI in Games Workshop at the AIIDE Conference, November 18, 2024, Lexington, USA

 

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Short paper accepted: Experiencing Forced Migration: A Participatory Approach to Developing a Serious Video Game

Authors: Kseniia Harshina, Imke Alenka Harbig, Mathias Lux, and Tom Tucek

Abstract: Forced migration affects millions worldwide due to conflict, disasters, and persecution. This paper presents a participatory approach to serious game development, engaging individuals with lived migration experiences to create authentic and impactful narratives. Based on qualitative research, we propose a game design methodology to enhance empathy and raise awareness of forced migration. Our study demonstrates the potential of participatory games to bridge the gap between forced migrants and the broader public, fostering empathy, social change, and empowerment for marginalized communities.

GALA Conference 2024 Proceedings will be published on Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Kseniia and Imke Harbig from the psychology department will present their research at the GALA conference in Berlin from November 20 to 22.

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Kseniia and Tom @ CHI PLAY 2024

Kseniia and Tom participated in the annual symposium CHI PLAY (Computer-Human Interaction in Play) from October 14–17/online.
They both took part in the doctoral consortium, where they presented their works and built connections with fellow doctoral students and experienced researchers in the field.
Kseniia presented her topic, “Developing a Virtual-Reality Game for Empathy Enhancement and Perspective-Taking in the Context of Forced Migration Experiences”, and Tom presented his topic, “Enhancing Empathy Through Personalized AI-Driven Experiences and Conversations with Digital Humans in Video Games”.
Proceedings are published under Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY Companion ’24), October 14–17, 2024, Tampere, Finland.

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Kseniia Harshina @ FROG Conference, Vienna (Future and Reality of Gaming 2024)

Kseniia participated in the annual FROG conference from 11 to 13 October, which had the topic of “Gaming the Apocalypse”. Her talk, “Unraveling the Romanticization of Colonial, Imperial and Authoritarian Narratives in Modern Video Games”, showcased a trend in video games to cutefy serious topics like historical power dynamics through aesthetics, and explained the potential issues caused by this phenomenon.

Her talk can be seen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37-sqVJrMoY), and proceedings will follow in the summer of 2025.

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Keynote talk @ 21st EAI International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems (MobiQuitous 2024)

Radu Prodan is invited to give a keynote talk at the 21st EAI International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems (MobiQuitous 2024), which will be held from November 12-14,2024, in Oslo, Norway.

Abstract:

The presentation starts by reviewing the convergence of two historically disconnected AI branches: symbolic AI of explicit deductive reasoning owning mathematical rigor and interpretability, and connectionist AI of implicit inductive reasoning lacking readability and explainability.
Afterward, it makes a case of neuro-symbolic data processing in knowledge graph representation approached by the Graph-Massivizer Horizon Europe project and applied for anomaly prediction in data centers using graph neural networks. Machine learning-driven graph sampling algorithms support its training and inference on resource-constrained Edge devices. The presentation concludes with an outlook into future projects targeting Edge large language models fine-tuned and contextualized using symbolic knowledge representation for regulatory AI compliance, job market, and medicine.

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Paper accepted: PagerBombs and Intelligent Vehicles: Stop Weaponing Supply Chains with Blockchain Intelligence

Authors: Jing Yang, Qinghua Ni, Song Zhang, Nan Zheng, Juanjuan Li, Lili Fan, Lili Fan, Radu Prodan, Levente Kovacs, Fei-Yue Wang

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10734076/

Abstract: The Lebanese wireless device explosion incident has drawn widespread attention, involving devices such as pagers, walkie-talkies, and other common devices. This event has revealed and highlighted the security vulnerabilities in global supply chains from raw material manufacturing and distribution to the usage of devices and equipment, signaling the onset of a new wave of “supply chain warfare”. Even worse, with the rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and smart hardware, the fragility of global supply chains would become increasingly fatal and significant, since almost all devices of daily usage could be maliciously programmed and triggered as weapons of massive destruction. Given this, we need new thinking and new approaches to improve supply chain security [3]. With its decentralized, tamper-proof, and highly traceable characteristics, blockchain technology is considered an effective solution to address these security threats [4], [5]. How to secure the entire lifecycle of smart devices, from production and transportation to usage, through blockchain-enabled safety management and protection, has become a pressing issue that requires immediate attention.

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Paper accepted: In-Band Quality Notification from Users to ISPs

Authors: Leonardo Peroni (UC3M, Spain); Sergey Gorinsky (IMDEA Networks Institute, Spain); Farzad Tashtarian (Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)

Conference: IEEE 13th International Conference on Cloud Networking (CloudNet)

27–29 November 2024 // Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract: While ISPs (Internet service providers) strive to improve QoE (quality of experience) for end users, end-to-end traffic encryption by OTT (over-the-top) providers undermines independent inference of QoE by an ISP. Due to the economic and technological complexity of the modern Internet, ISP-side QoE inference based on OTT assistance or out-of-band signaling sees low adoption. This paper presents IQN (in-band quality notification), a novel mechanism for signaling QoE impairments from an automated agent on the end-user device to the server-to-client ISP responsible for QoE-impairing congestion. Compatible with multi-ISP paths, asymmetric routing, and other Internet realities, IQN does not require OTT support and induces the OTT server to emit distinctive packet patterns that encode QoE information, enabling ISPs to infer QoE by monitoring these patterns in network traffic. We develop a prototype system, YouStall, which applies IQN signaling to ISP-side inference of YouTube stalls.
Cloud-based experiments with YouStall on YouTube Live streams validate IQN’s feasibility and effectiveness, demonstrating its potential for accurate user-assisted ISP-side QoE inference from encrypted traffic in real Internet environments.

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Happy Retirement to Hermann

On October 3rd, 2024, Hermann’s retirement was celebrated with a special event. During the celebration, the Governor of Carinthia presented him with the Grand Decoration of Honour from the State of Carinthia. In his farewell lecture, Hermann reflected on important topics from his 30-year career, many of which went beyond informatics. He spoke about issues that are relevant to all stages of working life. The lecture was titled “30 Years as an Informatics Professor: Insights and Outlooks.” Many colleagues and friends shared their experiences working with Hermann and wished him well in retirement. Prof. Erich Schwarz moderated the event.

Hadi
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Paper accepted: MVCD: Multi-Dimensional Video Compression Dataset

Authors: Hadi Amirpour (AAU, Austria), Mohammad Ghasempour (AAU, Austria), Farzad Tashtarian (AAU, Austria), Ahmed Telili (TII, UAE), Samira Afzal (AAU, Austria), Wassim Hamidouche (INSA, France), Christian Timmerer (AAU, Austria)

Conference: IEEE Visual Communications and Image Processing (IEEE VCIP 2024) – Tokyo, Japan, December 8-11, 2024

Abstract: In the field of video streaming, the optimization of video encoding and decoding processes is crucial for delivering high-quality video content. Given the growing concern about carbon dioxide emissions, it is equally necessary to consider the energy consumption associated with video streaming. Therefore, to take advantage of machine learning techniques for optimizing video delivery, a dataset encompassing the energy consumption of the encoding and decoding process is needed. This paper introduces a comprehensive dataset featuring diverse video content, encoded and decoded using various codecs and spanning different devices. The dataset includes 1000 videos encoded with four resolutions (2160p, 1080p, 720p, and 540p) at two frame rates (30 fps and 60 fps), resulting in eight unique encodings for each video. Each video is further encoded with four different codecs — AVC (libx264), HEVC (libx265), AV1 (libsvtav1), and VVC (VVenC) — at four quality levels defined by QPs of 22, 27, 32, and 37. In addition, for AV1, three additional QPs of 35, 46, and 55 are considered. We measure both encoding and decoding time and energy consumption on various devices to provide a comprehensive evaluation, employing various metrics and tools. Additionally, we assess encoding bitrate and quality using quality metrics such as PSNR, SSIM, MS-SSIM, and VMAF. All data and the reproduction commands and scripts have been made publicly available as part of the dataset, which can be used for various applications such as rate and quality control, resource allocation, and energy-efficient streaming.

Dataset URL: https://github.com/cd-athena/MVCD

Index Terms— Video encoding, decoding, energy, complexity, quality.

Hadi
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Paper accepted: Energy-Efficient Video Streaming: A Study on Bit Depth and Color Subsampling

Authors: Hadi Amirpour (AAU, Austria), Lingfeng Qu (Guangzhou University, China), Jong Hwan Ko (SKKU, South Korea), Cosmin Stejerean (Meta, USA), Christian Timmerer (AAU, Austria

Conference: IEEE Visual Communications and Image Processing (IEEE VCIP 2024)  – Tokyo, Japan, December 8-11, 2024

Abtract: As video dimensions — including resolution, frame rate, and bit depth — increase, a larger bitrate is required to maintain a higher Quality of Experience (QoE). While videos are often optimized for resolution and frame rate to improve compression and energy efficiency, the impact of color space is often overlooked. Larger color spaces are essential for avoiding color banding and delivering High Dynamic Range (HDR) content with richer, more accurate colors, although this comes at the cost of higher processing energy. This paper investigates the effects of bit depth and color subsampling on video compression efficiency and energy consumption. By analyzing different bit depths and subsampling schemes, we aim to determine optimized settings that balance compression efficiency with energy consumption, ultimately contributing to more sustainable and high-quality video delivery. We evaluate both encoding and decoding energy consumption and assess the quality of videos using various metrics including PSNR, VMAF, ColorVideoVDP, and CAMBI. Our findings offer valuable insights for video codec developers and content providers aiming to improve the performance and environmental footprint of their video streaming services.

Index Terms— Video encoding, video decoding, video quality, bit depth, color subsampling, energy.