AI and Citizen Science: Building trust, transparency and hybrid Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Citizen Science (CS) are increasingly intertwined in the European research and innovation landscape. Both represent collaborative, data-driven approaches to knowledge production, but they differ fundamentally in their relationship to public participation and trust. While AI is often perceived as opaque and centralised, citizen science is rooted in principles of open science, inclusion, and collective agency. Integrating the two oUers a path to both creating more efficient and scalable CS initiatives and more democratic, transparent, and human-centred AI systems. Europe faces an urgent policy challenge: ensuring that AI technologies are developed and governed in ways that reinforce democratic legitimacy and social trust rather than eroding them.

The EU AI Act, alongside Horizon Europe’s Cluster 2 – Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society, explicitly calls for public engagement and transparency in AI development. Citizen science provides a proven mechanism to achieve this through involving citizens in the co-creation, monitoring, and ethical oversight of AI technologies. 

This IMPETUS policy brief introduces a framing for conceiving of the relationship between AI and Citizen Science (Citizen Science for AI) and for leveraging AI tools to improve citizen science practice (AI for Citizen Science). It also provides insights into how citizen science projects currently use these technologies, drawing on the IMPETUS Accelerator. Throughout, it highlights the benefits and challenges and provides recommendations for next steps.