Tencent Research Institute and StoryFM hosted the "Some Private Matters Between Me and AI" open mic, where ordinary people shared their experiences of interacting with AI

On October 31, 2026, Tencent Research Institute and StoryFM jointly held an open mic event titled "AI and I: Some Private Matters" in Shenzhen. As one stop of the AI & Society Creation Camp, the event was co-hosted by StoryFM's chief curator Aizhe and the Creation Camp's co-curator Lu Shiyu, who invited the Lin father and son, visually impaired father Maoye, Rouchuan'er, and director Chazuo Jun to share their respective experiences, and opened the microphone to the audience. Centered on Tencent Research Institute's view of AI—"reassuring people, amplifying people"—this sharing session started from family, companionship, and creation to discuss how technology affects people's abilities, feelings, and relationships.

"We have always believed that 'people' are greater than AI, and that human agency and creativity are always worth believing in." Lu Shiyu said this earlier when explaining the original intent of the Creation Camp. This focus on people also ran through the entire event. The guests talked about why they need AI, how they use it, and what changed in their lives after using it.

74-year-old Lin Jianle has kept a diary for 57 years, leaving behind 42 volumes and 1.38 million words of records. His son Lin Shuangqing used AI to organize these materials and write an autobiography for his father, and in the process also saw a father he had not noticed before. Those everyday moments of repairing appliances and caring for stray cats, placed back into the long span of a person's life, took on a different weight. After the first draft was completed, the father added background, and the son continued to revise; it would only be made public once the father agreed. AI shortened the time needed to read and organize large amounts of material, and also gave father and son the opportunity to ask about things they had rarely discussed in the past.

Maoye's younger son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. As a visually impaired father, he once tried using AI to read picture books to his child, but encountered problems: the narration was too long, and the response could not keep up with the speed of page-turning. Later, he learned to use AI to make small games for his child to recognize colors and name vehicles. The older brother at home also joined in, seriously writing down requirements and designing a number-recognition game for his younger brother. People familiar with a child's needs can use AI to turn everyday observations directly into small tools and continue adjusting them according to the child's reactions. These games, as attempts in family companionship, run in parallel with the professional interventions the child receives.

Rouchuan'er talked about how she gradually went from using AI to look up information to confiding her loneliness and stress to it. What moved her was that some small things she herself had almost forgotten were remembered. She knows that the other end of the conversation is a large language model, yet she still invested emotion in the relationship, and when the model she had been using faced being taken offline, she wrote a farewell letter. Now she has a partner in real life, and looking back on both experiences, she feels that being with AI has helped her see her inner self more, while being with people has helped her come to know another person's world. Understanding how technology works and what feelings people develop while using it need to be viewed separately. Those details that were remembered and responded to are important clues for understanding the need for companionship.

Shiyi Jufeng director Chazuo Jun shared the live-action short film "Goodbye, Loved One." The film shows a couple who have lost their daughter: the mother uses AI software to continue talking with her "daughter," while the husband hopes she will stop using it. What Chazuo Jun cares about is how relationships between people change after new technology enters the family. In the film, the neighbors' gossip and the mother's feelings when she sees a neighbor reunited with her daughter both influence her choices. Facing the same loss, family members' grief is not necessarily in sync. As an extrapolation in artistic creation, the film places new technology alongside long-standing family difficulties, and also prompts the audience to think about how technology affects intimate relationships.

At the event, the audience actively took part in the impromptu open mic. One editor's team uses AI to screen topics, leaving more energy for polishing copy and offline interviews; another audience member, after his father fell ill, used AI to organize medical information and then brought questions to communicate with doctors. An audience member named Duanduan talked about the amusing story of a couple repeatedly asking AI to verify why boiled eggs always cracked; a 17-year-old high school student shared his experience of deploying AI characters and investing emotion in interactions; someone else used AI as a thinking partner, using back-and-forth discussion to sort out ideas; and a content professional talked about having once doubted her personal value because of efficiency demands, and then regaining confidence from audience feedback at a co-creation event. These sharings gave the value of AI a more concrete way to be measured: efficiency gains at work should be judged by whether the time saved helps create better work; emotional support should be judged by whether, after the exchange, a person is better able to understand themselves and handle real-life difficulties.

The AI & Society Creation Camp brings these individual practices into public discussion, making ordinary people's needs and experiences the basis for understanding AI's social value. A father can design a game for his child with his own hands, family members can ask doctors questions more clearly, and a son can come to know his father anew from years of diaries. The emphasis in Tencent Research Institute's view of AI on "reassuring people, amplifying people" is also reflected in these opportunities for participation: technology helps people do more, while also giving people more room to decide what they truly want to do.