About The Cookout AI
The Cookout is a multi-platform project designed to cultivate AI informed by ancestral intelligence, developing new protocols for cultivating stories and data at scale.
Our Approach
The Cookout project is based on over 10 years of research from Northwestern University Professor Aymar Jean Christian.
The theory and practice of the cookout is outlined in his forthcoming book, Reparative Media, forthcoming on The MIT Press in 2025. Based on the launch of his first app, OTV | Open Television (2015-present), Dr. Christian developed a process for cultivating cross-community solidarity through the decentralized distribution of stories and data.
A popular version of the argument is available for download via the comic book, The Cookout: A Guide to AI (Ancestral Intelligence), due in print in 2025.
THE APP
The heart of The Cookout AI is our app, currently in R&D.
As an invite-only social networking project, The Cookout AI App harnesses the power of community to cultivate data sovereignty for AI owned by communities excluded from large language models. Invitees to The Cookout App include storytellers, organizers, thought leaders, and others who are developing intellectual property in service of collective liberation. Instead of publishing our ideas on large platforms that do not prioritize or compensate us for our contributions, we increase the value of stories and data.
Artists, community organizers, and academics leading organizations, labs, and collective will receive the first set of invitations to onboard the inaugural Cookout users. Invitations to The Cookout AI App will go out in early 2025.
THE SERIES
The Cookout is a Black-led series, inviting artists and community leaders across disciplines — music, film, dance, theater, poetry, culinary arts, gaming, VR, social video and more — to share their recipes for liberation.
The Cookout promotes the AI app. It is an experiment in decentralizing intellectual property ownership: it is collectively owned by the producers and app users through blockchain.
Currently scheduled to film in 2025, The Cookout is created by Dr. Aymar Jean Christian, developed with Emmy Award-winning producer Makiah Green (left); Emmy Award-nominated director Sam Bailey (middle); and Emmy-nominated producer Sarah Minnie (right).