Responsible AI research
Study how recommendation, personalization and generative AI shape choices, trust and information environments.
Explore research →Professor · Research leader · Adviser
Building responsible AI that people can understand, question and trust.
I lead research and innovation at the intersection of recommender systems, computational user behaviour and trustworthy AI — turning rigorous evidence into technologies, organisations and real societal impact.
Full Professor at the University of Bergen and Founder & Director of SFI MediaFutures
150+peer-reviewed publications
NOK 650m+funding secured or co-secured
~NOK 300mMediaFutures ecosystem
ACMDistinguished Speaker
What I do
Research, leadership and advice with real-world consequences
My work connects rigorous behavioural research with responsible technology design, institutional leadership and practical implementation.
Research & innovation leadership
Build interdisciplinary teams, partnerships and long-term programmes that move ideas from evidence to field deployment.
See selected impact →Keynotes & strategic advisory
Help leaders, product teams and public organisations turn complex AI questions into clear strategy and responsible decisions.
View services →Selected impact
Creating the conditions for responsible innovation at scale
As founder and director of SFI MediaFutures, I conceived and built a national research–industry ecosystem for responsible media technology. The centre’s outputs are collective achievements. My contribution combines direct research and scientific leadership with the vision, consortium-building, funding, agenda-setting and organisational infrastructure that enable researchers and partners to translate work into tools, pilots and practice.
25+public tools and demonstrations
20+ yearsacross research and applied innovation
Media · Health · Foodhigh-impact application domains
Internationalacademic and industry partnerships
Partner outcomes
Evidence from real media settings
Selected examples documented across the MediaFutures annual reports, from verification tools adopted internationally to recommendation and editorial systems tested with partner data and users.
Media Cluster Norway · C2PA
Provenance labels that increase news trust
A three-country study translated content credentials into evidence for newsroom and platform design.
Faktisk.no · AFP
Verification tools with international uptake
Tools developed for conflict verification were used by fact-checkers and adopted by teams beyond Norway.
TV 2 · TV 2 Play
Recommendation evaluated in the wild
Responsible personalisation moved from models and prototypes into partner pipelines and live-platform evaluation.
Profile
Responsible AI grounded in human behaviour
Christoph Trattner is a professor and research leader working on responsible recommender systems, computational user behaviour and trustworthy AI. With more than 20 years of experience at the intersection of academia, industry, and applied AI innovation, he helps organisations design, evaluate, and govern AI systems that influence human decision-making in high-impact domains such as media, health, food, and consumer behaviour.
He is a Full Professor at the University of Bergen, Director of the Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation (SFI MediaFutures), and founder and leader of the DARS research group, Norway’s largest research group on recommender systems. He also leads the Norwegian Computational Behaviour & AI Lab, where interdisciplinary teams develop responsible AI solutions for real-world societal and business challenges. In addition, he is a founding member and board member of NoSoCSS, an interdisciplinary initiative advancing computational social science in Norway and beyond.
Trattner has initiated and led large-scale research and innovation collaborations involving startups, public-sector organisations, and multinational companies across Europe and the United States. As founder and director of SFI MediaFutures, he conceived and built a national research–industry ecosystem that translates responsible AI research into practical technologies for journalism, media production, recommendation, fact-checking, accessibility, and democratic resilience.
Work with me on a keynote, advisory engagement or research collaboration →
Selected leadership & service
Trusted roles beyond my own research projects
A few concrete examples of how I have contributed to research communities, institutions and professional evaluation.
Board Member, Media City Bergen
Served on the board of Media City AS through June 2022, contributing to Bergen’s media and technology ecosystem.
ACM RecSys Co-Chair
Workshop and Late-Breaking Results Co-Chair for the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems.
Senior PC, ACM SIGIR
Served on the Senior Programme Committee of a leading international information-retrieval conference.
ACM Distinguished Speaker
Selected by ACM to communicate computing research to professional, academic and public audiences.
Recent activity
Latest news
Happy to share that our SFI MediaFutures paper “Explanations for Recommended Low-Interest News Articles Fail to Persuade Selective News Avoiders” with Svenja Lys Forstner and Alain D. Starke has been accepted at the INRA workshop at ACM UMAP 2026 in Gothenburg.
Great news to share: our paper “Impact of a Prototype Combining Recommender Functionality with Structured Documentation on Operator Performance in Calls to Medical Communication Centers: A Quasi-Experimental Feasibility Study” has been published. The work explores how recommender-based decision support can contribute to medical communication and emergency primary care. Link
Very happy to share that two new Research Council of Norway mobility projects connected to SFI MediaFutures and the University of Bergen have been awarded: CuratedAI, focusing on AI transparency, media literacy and appropriate media trust, and VaccAI, focusing on trustworthy health communication and vaccine beliefs in Norway and Ukraine. Together, the projects represent NOK 17.1 million in funding.
Very happy to share that two of our full papers have been accepted at ACM UMAP 2026: “Increasing Editor Trust in News Personalization Systems with Fact-checked Large Language Models” and “Using AI as a Chef: Users Overlook Nutritional Flaws in LLM-Generated Recipes”. Both papers are led by my research assistants Tobias Jovall Wessel and Yelyzaveta Lysova as first authors, together with Alain D. Starke and myself.
Happy to share that I will be on parental leave until mid-June, spending time with my daughter.
We are happy to announce NoSoCSS — a new interdisciplinary initiative advancing research at the intersection of computational social science, data, and society: https://nosocss.org/.
Open earlier news archive
- [11/2025] I’m excited to share that our paper “C2PA Provenance Labels Increase Trust in Digital News Platforms Across Western Countries” has been accepted (8% acceptance rate this round) for publication at the prestigious ICWSM 2026 conference – The International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media! Pre-Print
- [11/2025]My PhD student Ayoub has passed his PhD defence with flying colours. He also got a paper accepted at IEEE Access in the context of his PhD about digital nudges and recommender systems. PDF
- [09/2025] Happy to share that I have started up a new research initiative focused on user behaviour & responsible AI. Check it out
- [08/2025] Great news, 6 papers in workshops at ACM RecSys 2025 have been accepted for publication and presentation by our PhD and MA students :)
- [07/2025] Happy summer holidays :)
- [05/2025] Happy to share that "The role of GPT as an adaptive technology in climate change journalism." has been accepted at ACM UMAP 2025 as a full paper. PDF
- [05/2025] Happy to share that MediaFutures passed its midway evaluation with flying colours!
- [04/2025] Happy to share that "Decoding Global Palates: Unveiling Cross-Cultural Flavor Preferences Through Online Recipes" has been accepted and published in the journal Foods. PDF
- [01/2025] Our paper "Supporting healthier food choices through AI-tailored advice: A research agenda" has been accepted and published in Elsevier's PEC Innovation journal. PDF
- [01/2025] Our paper "Evaluating Sequential Recommendations in the Wild: A Case Study on Offline Accuracy, Click Rates, and Consumption" has been accepted at ECIR 2025. PDF
- [10/2024] I’m thrilled to share that three papers led by our PhD students have been accepted at the INRA and HealthRecsys workshops in this year's ACM RecSys 2024 conference in Bari!
- [09/2024] Happy to share that our paper "Advancing Visual Food Attractiveness Predictions for Healthy Food Recommender Systems" has been accepted at the HealthRecsys workshop at ACM RecSys 2024.
- [08/2024] Our paper "Examining the merits of feature-specific similarity functions in the news domain using human judgments" has been published in Springer's UMUAI journal. PDF
- [07/2024] Happy holidays :)
- [06/2024] Fantastic to hear that our MediaFutures PhD candidate Anastasiia Klimashevskaia has gotten a Level 2 journal (highest journal ranking in Norway) accepted based on her PhD work.
- [06/2024] In total, we got 4 papers accepted at ACM UMAP 2024! Read the news here :)
- [04/2024] Nice to hear that our Workshop proposal on Health Recommender Systems with Helma Torkamaan, Hanna Hauptmann and myself as organisers has been accepted at ACM Recsys 2024 as a full day workshop! Stay tuned for the call for papers :)
- [03/2024] Great to hear that our paper "Shaping the Future of Content-based News Recommenders Insights from Evaluating Feature-Specific Similarity Metrics" with our MA student Daniel Roses as first author and co-authored/supervised by Alain Starke and myself has been accepted to ACM UMAP 2024 as a Full Paper!
- [02/2024] Great to hear that our MediaFutures: Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation opinion paper co-authored by Nick Diakopoulos, Christoph Trattner, Dietmar Jannach, Irene Costera Meijer and Enrico Motta, entitled "Leveraging Professional Ethics for Responsible AI: Applying AI techniques to journalism." is finally online and published in Communications of the ACM! PDF
- [01/2024] Happy new year!
- [2023 - 2012] For older news, check the source code!
Scholarship
Featured recent publications
Three recent studies spanning responsible media AI, user trust and health-related generative AI.
Increasing Editor Trust in News Personalization Systems with Fact-checked Large Language Models
A study of how fact-checked LLM support can shape editor trust in personalised news systems.
Using AI as a Chef: Users Overlook Nutritional Flaws in LLM-Generated Recipes
Examining how people assess the nutritional quality of recipes produced by large language models.
C2PA Provenance Labels Increase Trust in News Platforms Across Western Countries
A cross-country study of how content provenance labels influence trust in digital news platforms.