Collaborative storytelling with human actors and AI narrators. Paper type: event report

Branch, Boyd, Mirowski, Piotr and Mathewson, Kory (2021) Collaborative storytelling with human actors and AI narrators. Paper type: event report. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computational Creativity, ICCC 2021. Association for Computational Creativity. pp. 97-101 .

Abstract

Large language models can be used for collaborative storytelling. In this work we report on using GPT-3(Brown et al. 2020) to co-narrate stories. The AI system must track plot progression and character arcs while the human actors perform scenes. This event report detail show a novel conversational agent was employed as creative partner with a team of professional improvisers to explore long-form spontaneous story narration in front of a live public audience. We introduced novel constraints on our language model to produce longer narrative text and tested the model in rehearsals with a team of professional improvisers. We then field tested the model with two live performances for public audiences as part of a live theatre festival in Europe. We surveyed audience members after each performance as well as performers to evaluate how well the AI performed in its role as narrator. Audiences and performers responded positively to AI narration and indicated preference for AI narration over AI characters within a scene. Performers also responded positively to AI narration and expressed enthusiasm for the creative and meaningful novel narrative directions introduced to the scenes. Our findings support improvisational theatre as a useful testbed to explore how different language models can collaborate with humans in a variety of social contexts.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Author: Boyd Branch

Download statistics