Unspoken Into the Spoken: Visualizing Cultural Nuances in Intercultural Romantic Dyads Through Generative AI-Driven Art

Intercultural romantic partners often face subtle emotional misunderstandings shaped by cultural norms that are difficult to articulate. Building on research on generative AI for reflective meaning-making, we investigate how a multimodal AI probe combining journaling, metaphorical visualization, and partner dialogue can help dyads externalize and reflect on culturally rooted experiences. Drawing on 28 academic papers and over 40 social media narratives, we identified eight recurring themes of cultural tension and designed a probe around prompts. In a six-day diary study with 14 participants (7 dyads), participants moved across textual journaling, AI-generated visual abstraction, and dialogue to support perspective-taking and situated co-interpretation of self, partner, and relationship. With repeated use, some dyads shifted from treating images as standalone artifacts to using them as prompts for sharing hidden narratives. We derive design implications for sustained intercultural reflection while emphasizing generated artifacts as provisional prompts rather than authoritative interpretations of emotions or culture.