# The AI-Therapist Duo: Exploring the Potential of Human-AI Collaboration in Personalized Art Therapy for PICS Intervention

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09757 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09757/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12086/) (2022)
- ["When He Feels Cold, He Goes to the Seahorse"-Blending Generative AI into Multimaterial Storymaking for Family Expressive Arts Therapy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.06472/) (2024)
- [Artful Path to Healing: Using Machine Learning for Visual Art Recommendation to Prevent and Reduce Post-Intensive Care](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15643/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Affect-aware Cross-Domain Recommendation for Art Therapy via Music Preference Elicitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21120/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Post-intensive care syndrome (PICS) is a multifaceted condition that arises from prolonged stays in an intensive care unit (ICU). While preventing PICS among ICU patients is becoming increasingly important, interventions remain limited. Building on evidence supporting the effectiveness of art exposure in addressing the psychological aspects of PICS, we propose a novel art therapy solution through a collaborative Human-AI approach that enhances personalized therapeutic interventions using state-of-the-art Visual Art Recommendation Systems. We developed two Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) personalization methods and assessed their impact through a large-scale user study (N=150). Our findings demonstrate that this Human-AI collaboration not only enhances the personalization and effectiveness of art therapy but also supports therapists by streamlining their workload. While our study centres on PICS intervention, the results suggest that human-AI collaborative Art therapy could potentially benefit other areas where emotional support is critical, such as cases of anxiety and depression.