Ella Muncie, Ph.D., is a researcher in environmental communication. She recently completed her doctoral degree at the University of Leicester, exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping creative activism. Her paper, Artificial Intelligence and New Voices in Environmental Campaigning, analyzed Greenpeace International’s “Alternative Futures” initiative, one of the first environmental campaigns to use AI-generated imagery (read more in our Research Review of Muncie’s paper). In this conversation, Muncie discusses the promises and pitfalls of using AI for environmental storytelling and what responsible advocacy might look like in the years ahead.
Q: What drew you to study AI and environmental campaigns like Greenpeace’s “Alternative Futures”?
Muncie: We stumbled upon Greenpeace using AI in one of their campaign outputs. It was new and different, and that really caught my attention. I started analyzing the images they produced, which became part of my PhD research.
Since then, I have been teaching and doing research in environmental communication, and I recently began a postdoctoral fellowship focused on AI in environmental advocacy. I will be looking at how organizations like Friends of the Earth and the Wildlife Trusts are using or responding to AI, and how they are navigating its potential without falling behind in what feels like an AI race.
Q: Can AI be perfectly integrated into environmental communication?
Muncie: Not yet. There are still many issues, especially around representation. The data that trains AI systems often comes from sources embedded with certain values and priorities rooted in a white, male worldview. That means marginalized voices are often excluded, which is a major issue in environmental communication.
If we want to talk about environmental justice, we need diverse perspectives, especially from the Global South, people who are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. AI might help with campaign efficiency, but there are trade-offs. You can send an email twenty minutes faster, but at what cost to authenticity or inclusion?
Q: Given these biases, can AI ever truly be trusted as a communication tool?
Muncie: That is complicated. AI’s outputs are always self-referential; they can only draw on what already exists. They do not create something entirely new. So even when we think we are imagining the unseen, such as the future, we are still assembling fragments of past realities.
There is also a risk to credibility. As AI becomes more advanced, it learns what makes an image look real. Organizations could easily repost an AI-generated photo thinking it is authentic, only to find out later that it is fake. For environmental organizations, that could seriously undermine public trust.
Q: What did you learn from the #DareToDream event in Indonesia, in which Indonesian youth were invited to reimagine a better future using AI image-generating tools? Did AI empower participants’ imagination or constrain it?
Muncie: I was not physically at the event, but I had access to campaign reflections and TikTok videos showing participants’ reactions. Most spoke very positively; they thought AI was capturing exactly what they imagined.
But in reality, many images did not reflect Indonesia at all. They looked generic, more like Western skylines or fantasy cities. Even when the prompts were culturally specific, the algorithm pulled from a limited set of visual references. The excitement came from novelty rather than authenticity. It was engaging but not representative of their lived experience.
Q: In your paper, you questioned whether AI adds value to environmental missions. What would responsible and inclusive AI use look like?
Muncie: Responsible use starts with involving diverse voices in the development and use of AI. It cannot just be built around Western ways of thinking. We need to bring in different languages, knowledge systems, and cultural understandings so that people have real agency in how the technology represents them.
It is also about accountability. Tech companies and governments must be made aware of the environmental and ethical issues. AI systems consume huge amounts of water and energy, which is ironic for organizations advocating sustainability. If you are campaigning for decarbonization but using a carbon-intensive technology, your values are not aligning with your message.
Q: What role do you think AI should play in science and environmental communication going forward?
Muncie: I think AI has potential from a textual point of view. It can help with campaign efficiency, drafting posts or emails faster for example, but it should enhance what humans create, not replace it. The human element is essential for context and emotion.
When it comes to images, I am more cautious. We have to ask whether we want to motivate people with something that is not real or whether real experiences should drive action. If it is the latter, then we already have plenty of authentic images to work with.
Q: Finally, what direction do you hope your future research will take?
Muncie: I want to keep exploring how to decolonize AI image and text production. Even the words AI learns from are shaped by specific cultural meanings. My goal is to integrate more diverse knowledge systems, such as Indigenous principles, into AI design so we can rethink what intelligence and representation mean.
It is an exciting time, but also a critical one. Everyone is talking about AI; some see it as revolutionary, others as terrifying. I think the truth lies somewhere in between. The question is whether we can still influence it before it evolves too far without us.
Abdulmalik Adetola is a master’s student in the Media Innovation and Journalism program at UNR and a graduate assistant for the Hitchcock Project. He is a passionate advocate for health literacy and digital communication, dedicated to promoting accurate and accessible health information in the modern age.
