AI Helps Nursing Facility Residents Express Themselves Artistically

HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON, NY — A Hudson Valley nursing facility is using artificial intelligence to help people with cognitive impairments and other medical needs express themselves through art.

Andrus on Hudson in Hastings-on-Hudson is using an app called DALL-E, which is a product of OpenAI, the same company that created the language bot ChatGPT.

With the app, one needs only to describe an image, and the computer makes a rendering, which can be changed as desired.

Andrus CEO James Rosenman said that most people don’t have the skills to be a real artist. However, they can paint and draw.

“But they don’t all have the ability to get the idea or the vision in their head onto a piece of paper,” he said.

“What if we had somebody, a staff member, sit down with residents that have varying medical needs or cognitive impairments who are interested in participating in a project where they can use their imagination, their ideas, and transfer that digitally?” Rosenman said.

Enter Ashley Scala, who is the community life manager at Andrus.

Using an iPad, she transcribes the residents’ descriptions into the app which are then generated into images. Those images can then be printed and framed so the residents can have them in their rooms and exhibited in a slide show on television screens in the facility’s lobby.

Scala said the program has helped patients increase their self-esteem — even those who have dementia.

“It’s opening up doors,” she said. “It’s a new world for them.”

Scala said it was incredibly meaningful for her to see the residents with dementia react to their own artwork.

“It's amazing to witness how this program is not only providing an outlet for their creativity but also bringing back memories and sparking conversations,” she told Patch.

“Watching their faces light up with pride and joy as they see their own ideas come to life is truly heartwarming,” Scala said.