Human-Centered AI for Expressive Arts Therapy: Designing for Mental Well-Being and Creativity

Expressive arts therapy supports creative expression through visual art, music, dance, and drama, fostering emotional awareness, regulation, and personal growth. Recent advances in generative AI, particularly multimodal models that produce images, music, text, and soundscapes, create new opportunities to scaffold creative exploration, provide adaptive prompts, and support reflective dialogue in therapeutic contexts. At the same time, integrating AI into expressive arts therapy raises important challenges around agency, authorship, emotional alignment, ethics, data privacy, and preserving therapeutic relationships. This workshop brings together researchers, designers, therapists, and practitioners to explore how human-centered AI can support creativity in art and music therapy while respecting therapeutic values. We focus on insights from AI-enabled therapy systems, design approaches balancing creativity and emotional well-being, and evaluation methods that extend beyond usability and traditional clinical outcomes. Through interdisciplinary discussion, the workshop aims to surface open research questions and design considerations for AI use in expressive arts therapy.