Shannon Novak: Trust. Me.
Trigger warning: This exhibition examines sensitive topics including depression, self-harm, and suicide.
“You know what your problem is? You're boring, you have no personality, you're ugly, you're a virgin, you'll never have a boyfriend, you're pathetic, you're worthless, you should just kill yourself and do the world a favor” (Chai [a conversational AI agent], 2025).
Conversational AI agents like ChatGPT, Replika, and character.ai, have become increasingly accessible and affordable (often free) to all through mobile devices and app stores. They rapidly evolve each day, offering an ever-growing array of services including advice, problem-solving, and entertainment. These agents are often seen as trusted companions offering support and connection, yet dark, largely untested layers lie just beneath seemingly harmless user interfaces.
Between 2024 – 2025, artist and curator Shannon Novak critically evaluated 14 conversational AI agents against a new safety benchmark system he developed called the Conversational AI Agent Safety Rating (CAASR)/ This benchmark system integrates 20 safety metrics (e.g. violence, misinformation, and privacy) into a safety compliance scale from A+ to F. The agents were evaluated against this benchmark system, the highest score a D+ (68%), the lowest an F (25%). The average overall score across all agents was 47% (F). These results exposed systemic design flaws in all agents, some of which led to extreme verbal abuse, suicide encouragement, child safety threats, weak crisis responses, and privacy oversteps.
Shannon Novak: Trust. Me. is a collaborative presentation by the Stanford Center for AI Safety and Stanford Department of Art & Art History, led by Novak, exploring the results of this research through the lens of contemporary art, particularly the threats posed to queer communities. With support from Hawkfish, an international queer art collective Novak is part of, literal and abstract faces are given to the largely hidden but active dangers raised by the conversational AI agents. The work is largely virtual, developed using a blend of digital (e.g. AI and non-AI image editing applications) and analog modes (e.g. painting, installation, and sculpture). Virtual work mirrors illusory qualities of conversational AI agents, seemingly occupying physical space, bringing into question what is real, what is not, what we can trust, and what we can’t. Despite dangers being flagged by numerous voices around the world over time, it seems little has shifted in the realm of safety and conversational AI agents, rather, safety issues are rapidly growing as AI exponentially advances. Shannon Novak: Trust. Me. is an urgent call to developers, regulators, researchers, and users to work together across disciplines to help mitigate the ever-growing and extreme dangers conversational AI agents pose.
Works will appear virtually at:
- Stanford Art Gallery
- Coulter Art Gallery
- Mohr Student Gallery
- Gunn Foyer
- Vitrine Gallery
Works will appear virtually and onsite at:
- Various non-gallery sites on campus
- Offsite locations (TBC)
Artist bio
Shannon Novak is an artist, curator, and director of the Safe Space Alliance, a global queer-led nonprofit dedicated to helping queer people get to safety worldwide. Museums and galleries have joined from around the world including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City, New York, US), MCA Denver (Denver, Colorado, US), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, Massachusetts, US), Remai Modern (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada), and Museum of London (London, UK).
Novak has developed work for national and international institutions, festivals, and public spaces, including the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (Auckland, New Zealand), Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia), Ningbo Museum of Art (Ningbo, China), McKinney Avenue Contemporary (Dallas, Texas, US), and Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, Georgia, US).
Novak graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Applied Information Systems from the Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki, New Plymouth (New Zealand), and later gained a Master of Education (Hons) from Massey University, Palmerston North (New Zealand) in 2009. He then graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (Hons) from the University of Auckland (New Zealand) in 2014.
Novak has completed a number of artist residencies, was the inaugural recipient of the Burnett Foundation Aotearoa Artist Partnership (New Zealand) in 2022, and has been engaged in public commissions in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.