SPECIMEN #2025-A: Aspirational AI Self-Imaging

• In Event: Digital Ecologies of Hope: A Natural History of Emerging Media Futures

Abstract

This study examines how young people use AI photo enhancement tools for future self-visualization as educational motivation. Through analysis of TikTok content where students use apps like Remini to envision themselves in professional contexts, this research reveals creative appropriation of technology for hope-making. Students transform AI tools designed for entertainment into instruments of persistence, creating temporal bridges between current struggles and aspirational futures. The practice demonstrates how young people adapt available technologies for psychological resilience within challenging educational systems. While individual motivation strategies cannot address systemic inequities, these digital rituals show how technology can support agency and goal visualization, suggesting AI's complex role in sustaining educational aspirations amid structural barriers.

Author

• Ioana Literat, Teachers College, Columbia University