ABSTRACT
Researchers in sport, exercise and physical education have long adopted visual methods within qualitative inquiry. New avenues for visual methods have recently developed with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and image-generation programmes such as Midjourney and DALL-E 3 to produce a diverse range of visual artefacts that could be used within qualitative projects. In this chapter, we explore the ways that AI-generated images can be used as a visual method within qualitative inquiry (AI-Assisted Image Creation). Incorporating images and insights from a research project exploring competitive athletes’ experiences of success and adversity, we explore the potential opportunities, challenges, risks and benefits of using AI-generated images within qualitative inquiry. The chapter provides a brief overview of AI and examples of images generated within interviews with participants; it then discusses the uses of AI-generated images as prompts within interviews and as objects for analysis. Issues related to participant representation, confidentiality and copyright are considered, as well as possibilities for integrating AI-generated images into qualitative inquiry in the future.
