AI as an Active Writer: Interaction strategies with generated text in human-AI collaborative fiction writing
Published in Joint Proceedings of the ACM IUI Workshops, 2022
Machine Learning (ML) has become an important part of the creative process for human fiction writers, allowing them to utilize various sources of information and be inspired by strategies and data previously seldom explored. To investigate how human writers collaborate with ML systems in fiction writing, we prototyped a web-based human-AI collaborative writing tool that allows writers to shorten, edit, summarize, and regenerate text produced by AI. To investigate the dynamics of human-AI interaction in fiction co-writing, we used a “finish each other’s story” approach where humans and machines took turns writing collaborative fiction. In results from a preliminary study with 9 users, we found that users took inspiration from unexpected text generated by the machine, that users expected reduced fluency and coherence in the machine text when allowed to edit the output, and that they perceived a mental model of the AI as an active writer in the collaborative process rather than simply as a passive AI writing assistant. This study provides design implications on supporting co-creative writing of humans and machines.
Recommended citation: Yang D, Zhou Y, Zhang Z, et al. AI as an Active Writer: Interaction strategies with generated text in human-AI collaborative fiction writing[C]//Joint Proceedings of the ACM IUI Workshops. CEUR-WS Team, 2022, 10: 1-11.
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