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A systematic review of artificial intelligence technologies used for story writing

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Abstract

With the digital revolution of artificial intelligence (AI) in language education, the way how people write and create stories has been transformed in recent years. Although recent studies have started to examine the roles of AI in literacy, there is a lack of systematic review to inform how it has been applied and what has been achieved in story-writing. This paper reviews the literature on the use of AI in story-writing during the last 5 years. The discussion explores the year of publication, countries of implementation, educational levels, participants and research methodology. In terms of research context, most studies were carried out in universities in the United States, and children and adult learners were the two most common participants. Most studies involved the collection and analysis of quantitative data. After that, the mechanisms of using AI for story-writing are investigated in terms of the types, approaches, and roles of AI. The pedagogies used in the learning context of AI-supported story-writing are discussed. Finally, the benefits of using AI in story-writing are pointed out. The findings show that the literature has paid most attention to learners’ creativity, writing skills, presentation skills, motivation, and satisfaction. The review also suggested that human-AI collaboration could effectively improve story creation. Some studies had trained high-level AI to help students write better stories. As findings from the current body of research are not conclusive, more work is needed in exploring challenges of using AI in story-writing. Lastly, a set of limitations and recommendations for future research are summarized in this study.

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Data availability

The authors declare that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary information files.

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Appendix. Reviewed studies and information

Appendix. Reviewed studies and information

SN

Author(s) and year of publication

Type of publication

Country

Educational level

Participant/Research object

Methodology

Type of AI technologies

Approach of AI technologies

Role of AI technologies

Pedagogy

Benefit

1

Biermann et al. (2022)

Empirical study

Canada

Adult education

20 adults (7 hobbyists and 13 professional writers)

Qualitative

AI-writers

Modern large-scale language models

Story collaborator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Help writers have good productivity and complete challenging writing tasks

2

Cambre et al. (2020)

Empirical study

USA

Adult education

149 adults

Mixed methods

Voice assistant

No mention

No mention

No mention

No mention

3

Cheong et al. (2018)

Descriptive study

Korea

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

AI planner

The unity game engine

Story animator

Not applicable

Generate the story with humans and then visualize it as a 3D animation

Encourage the user to interact with the story by manipulating props or characters

4

Chung et al. (2022)

Empirical study

USA

Adult education

14 adults (7 female and 7 male)

Qualitative

TaleBrush

GPT-Neo

Story generator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Collaborate with writers to generate stories based on their intentions about characters’ fortune

Maintain the novelty of generated sentences

Inspire writers’ ideas when the AI application generates stories

5

Clark et al. (2018)

Empirical study

USA

Adult education

36 adults

Mixed methods

Machine in the loop systems

A neural language model

Story co-creator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Generate suggestions based on writers’ story context

6

Coenen et al. (2021)

Descriptive study

USA

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Wordcraft (an AI-assisted editor)

Neural language generation

Story collaborator

Not applicable

Collaborate with writers to complete a story

7

Gala et al. (2021)

Empirical study

India

Adult education

No mention

Quantitative

An encoder-decoder architecture

Recurrent neural networks

Story generator

No mention

Generate grammatically correct and sensible stories automatically based on images

8

Goldfarb-Tarrant et al. (2019)

Empirical study

USA

Adult education

30 workers

Quantitative

A neural narrative generation system

A conditional language models implemented with LSTMs

Story co-creator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Interact with humans to generate stories

9

Hsu et al. (2019)

Empirical study

USA

Adult education

197 workers

Quantitative

State-of-the-art visual storytelling models

Human-centered computer (supported storytelling system)

Story collaborator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Assist writers in generating machine-generated visual story based on the visual storytelling model using the VIST dataset (with photos)

Collaborate with users to generate good quality and understandable stories by reducing word redundancy and increasing lexical diversity

10

Issa and Jusoh (2019)

Descriptive study

Jordan

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Markov chain model (a model that hires statistics in determining a sequence of elements according to certain rules or history)

Natural language generation

Story generator

Not applicable

Generate educational stories automatically based on users setting characters

11

Karlimah et al. (2021)

Empirical study

Indonesia

Primary education

25 primary students

Quantitative

Motion comic storyboard

Drawing applications, animation applications, and project export applications

Storyteller

Technology-mediated story creation

Improve primary students’ math skills by developing a motion comic prototype about fractions

12

Lee et al. (2022)

Empirical study

USA

Adult education

63 writers

Quantitative

CoAuthor

GPT-3

Story collaborator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Collaborate with writers to generate stories

Enhance writers’ story language, ideation, and collaboration capabilities

13

Min et al. (2021)

Descriptive study

Korea

Not applicable

Stories from two datasets

Not applicable

Visual story writer model

Recurrent neural network structure and encoder-decoder model

Story generator

Not applicable

Generate several captions describing story contents based on the input images. These captions are then used to create a sequence of sentences to make a short story as the output

14

Nichols et al. (2021)

Empirical study

Canada

Higher education

122 adults (workers and university students)

Mixed methods

AI agent

A large-scale neural language model

Story collaborator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Assist writers in generating sufficiently human-like utterances and propose a sample-and-rank approach to improve utterance quality

15

Noceti et al. (2020)

Empirical study

Italy

Preschool and primary education

Over 1000 participants (parents and children aged 5–8)

Qualitative

Triangle coding

Triangle language

Story generator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Help an interpretation of the shapes sequence and the generation of a fantasy sentence or a small story

16

Osone et al. (2021)

Empirical study

Japan

Adult education

48 adults (16 writers and 32 readers)

Quantitative

BunCho (an AI supported story co-creation system)

GPT-2

Story co-creator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Assist Japanese novelists in creating high-level and creative writing, enhance affective-enjoyed writing synopses (creativity, interestingness, comprehensibility, grammatical correctness, consistency of sentences), improve common metrics-creativity, and broadened their stories

17

Park and Park (2018)

Descriptive study

Korea

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

Intelligent narrative story creation systems

Unity game engine

Story co-creator

Not applicable

Enhance the satisfaction of users through VR in storytelling activities

18

Peng et al. (2018)

Empirical study

USA

No mention

98,162 stories

Quantitative

An analyze-to-generate story framework

A conditional language model

Story generator

No mention

Generate stories based on control factors extracted from existing stories to reflect a user’s intent

Provide a good interaction environment for users

19

Roemmele et al. (2018)

Empirical study

USA

Adult education

139 adults

Quantitative

Creative Help

Recurrent neural network language model (RNN LM)

Story collaborator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Assist writers in generating more grammatical and coherent sentences, writing the story easier, influenced its content more, and were more helpful overall. The authors made significantly fewer changes to the sentence suggestions

20

Shakeri et al. (2021)

Empirical study

Canada

Adult education

2 adults

Qualitative

SAGA (an asynchronous collaborative storytelling system)

GPT-3

Story collaborator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Collaborate with users to generate stories based on their prompt in terms of the basis of the story, and can include things like the setting, genre of the story, and even descriptions of the characters

21

Suh and An (2022)

Descriptive study

Canada

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

CodeToon (generative conversational AI)

GPT-3

Story co-creator

Not applicable

Assist students’ learning, creative, and sensemaking process in a visual programming environment where users can create comics from code

Encourage out-of-the-box ideas and motivate users to participate actively in this co-creative process

22

Wicke and Veale (2021)

Descriptive study

Ireland

Adult education

2 robot and 1 human

Not applicable

A multi-modal storytelling system

Scéalability storytelling framework

Story generator

Not applicable

Collaborate with robots to develop stories based on users’ emotions and gestures

23

Xu et al. (2020)

Empirical study

China

No mention

98,161 stories

Mixed methods

MEGATRON-CNTRL (a novel framework)

Large-scale language models

Story generator

No mention

Assist writers in generating more fluent, consistent, and coherent stories with less repetition and higher diversity

24

Yuan et al. (2022)

Empirical study

USA

Adult education

25 hobbyist writers

Mixed methods

Wordcraft (an AI-assisted editor)

A generative language model

Story co-creator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Respond to writers’ custom requests via open-ended conversation and express them in natural language

Generate suggestions for writers in the creative process

25

Zhang (2020)

Descriptive study

China

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

An application of AI Interactive storytelling in Animation

UnrealTM game engine

Story animator

Not applicable

Use 3D animation system to present storyline setting by characteristics and scenario development

26

Zhang et al. (2021)

Empirical study

China

Preschool and primary education

10 children aged 5–10

Mixed methods

StoryDrawer

A co-creative agent

Story co-creator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Assist children’s oral and drawing skills

27

Zhang et al. (2022)

Empirical study

China

Preschool and primary education

24 participants (12 parents and 12 Children aged 6–10)

Qualitative

StoryDrawer

A context-based voice agent and two AI-driven collaborative strategies

Story collaborator

Human-AI collaborative writing

Inspire participants’ creative, elaborate ideas, and contribute to their creative outcomes during an engaging visual storytelling experience

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Fang, X., Ng, D.T.K., Leung, J.K.L. et al. A systematic review of artificial intelligence technologies used for story writing. Educ Inf Technol 28, 14361–14397 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11741-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11741-5

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