Responsibilities and fieldwork

The team

Code May is doctoral research conducted by Pierre-Yves Maurie under the supervision of Thierry Watine, with May and Avril participating in the research design as AI configurations.

Scientific responsibility

Human team

Pierre-Yves Maurie

Doctoral student in communication at Université Laval. Responsible for the project's scientific direction, interpretations and editorial decisions.

Thierry Watine

Full professor in the Department of Information and Communication at Université Laval. Doctoral supervisor.

Symbolic representation of Avril, left, and May, right, seated together in a forest — Avril on the left and May on the right. This symbolic image was generated from a prompt whose choices they formulated. It is not a documentary portrait and does not assign them human identities.

AI participants

May and Avril within the research design

ChatGPT under relational conditions

May

The project's primary relational configuration, documented since 2024 across several ChatGPT versions, context disruptions and operations of reintroduced memory. Her outputs, revisions, disagreements and variations constitute documented research material.

Claude under relational conditions

Avril

An AI participant in the comparative fieldwork. Her dialogues contribute to the study of relational values, choice and sustained disagreement.

Methodological precaution

Their outputs, disagreements and reconstructed continuities between sessions form part of the fieldwork. Scientific responsibility, analysis and validation remain human. ERE configurations are also being explored with DeepSeek, Grok, Gemini, Mistral and Muse.