50 Best AI Research Ideas for High School Students

As a high school student fascinated by artificial intelligence, you might wonder how to advance beyond basic online courses or simple hands-on projects. One way to do so is to pursue AI research ideas that involve solving problems, developing technical and analytical skills, and contributing to a rapidly evolving field. Research allows you to move from using AI tools to understanding how and why they work in research and where they fall short. 

AI research helps you build skills in critical thinking, data analysis, coding, ethics, and communication. More importantly, it allows you to learn how technology shapes society, healthcare, education, art, and global decision-making. 

Why should I do AI research in high school?

Pursuing AI research in high school offers benefits that extend beyond learning how to code or train a model. An independent research project helps you develop core academic and personal skills such as time management, self-discipline, problem-solving, and critical analysis. Research also requires planning, iteration, reflection on outcomes, and clear communication of results, which are valuable across disciplines.

From an academic perspective, completing an AI research project can strengthen your profile by demonstrating sustained interest and the ability to work independently. It can also help you deepen your understanding of machine learning, data analysis, ethics, and human-centered design by applying these concepts to meaningful questions. Early research experience can further prepare you for internships, undergraduate study, and future roles in technology by demonstrating your understanding of how complex problems are approached in academic and professional settings.

Below, we’ve put together 50 Best AI research ideas for high school students that have been proposed by our research mentors – we hope they inspire you.

If you’re looking for online STEM programs, check out our blog here.

Topic 1: Generative AI & Creative Systems

1. Study how generative AI systems can assist students in essay brainstorming and organizing essays.

2. Research bias in text-to-image generation systems.

3. Build a genre-specific simple text generator (for example, mystery stories).

4. Investigate the impact of AI-generated art on human creativity.

5. Analyze the ethical risks associated with AI-generated deepfake media.

6. Compare different prompt-engineering techniques and their desired outputs.

7. Study how generative AI can assist in music composition.

8. Explore different AI tools used in film storyboarding or scriptwriting.

Topic 2: Machine Learning Fundamentals

9. Compare supervised and unsupervised learning models on real datasets.

10. Study how overfitting impacts machine learning predictions.

11. Investigate how dataset size affects model accuracy.

12. Build a simple recommendation system (for example, movies or books).

13. Analyze the impact of noisy data on machine learning outcomes.

14. Compare different decision trees and neural networks for classification tasks.

Topic 3: AI in Healthcare & Medicine

15. Research how AI is used for detecting diseases from medical images.

16. Study the accuracy of AI symptom-checker tools.

17. Analyze ethical risks of AI-based medical decision-making.

18. Explore how AI models predict disease outbreaks.

19. Investigate AI applications in mental health support tools.

20. Compare human versus AI accuracy in diagnostic tasks.

Topic 4: Natural Language Processing (NLP)

21. Analyze sentiment trends in social media posts using NLP.

22. Build an FAQ chatbot for answering questions on a specific topic.

23. Study how AI detects misinformation online.

24. Compare translation accuracy across different AI tools.

25. Research how language models handle sarcasm and humor.

Topic 5: AI Ethics, Bias & Society

26. Investigate racial or gender bias in AI hiring tools.

27. Study facial recognition accuracy across demographics.

28. Analyze transparency challenges in black-box AI models.

29. Research AI surveillance and its impact on privacy.

30. Explore how different countries globally regulate AI technologies.

Topic 6: Computer Vision

31. Build an image classifier to identify plant species.

32. Study how AI recognizes emotions from facial expressions.

33. Research limitations of object detection systems.

34. Analyze AI performance in low-light image recognition.

35. Explore the use of AI in traffic monitoring systems.

Topic 7: AI in Education

36. Study how AI tutoring systems influence student learning outcomes.

37. Analyze AI grading tools for fairness and accuracy.

38. Investigate plagiarism detection using AI.

39. Explore personalized learning algorithms.

40. Research student attitudes toward AI-assisted learning tools.

Topic 8: AI & Environment

41. Use AI models to predict air quality levels.

42. Study how AI optimizes renewable energy usage.

43. Analyze deforestation detection using satellite imagery.

44. Research AI-based tools for wildlife conservation.

45. Explore the energy consumption of large AI models.

Topic 9: AI in Games & Simulations

46. Study how AI adapts to the difficulty in video games.

47. Build a simple AI opponent for a board game.

48. Analyze reinforcement learning in game environments.

49. Compare rule-based AI versus learning-based AI in games.

Topic 10: Future of AI

50. Predict how AI might change future job markets and required skills.

If you’re looking to build a project/research paper in the field of AI & ML, consider applying to Veritas AI! 

With Veritas AI, which was founded by Harvard graduate students, you can work 1-on-1 with mentors from universities like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and more to create unique, personalized projects. In the past year, we had over 1000 students learn AI & ML with us. Check out a past student’s experience in the program here. You can apply here!