Writer-Defined AI Personas for On-Demand Feedback Generation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel approach where writers create AI personas representing their target audience to generate tailored, on-demand feedback, enhancing the revision process despite some limitations in specificity.

Contribution

It presents a new concept of writer-defined AI personas for feedback, demonstrated through a prototype and user studies, expanding AI support for creative writing.

Findings

Writers found personas helpful for gaining different perspectives.

Feedback was often verbose and lacked specificity.

The approach influenced writers' revision strategies.

Abstract

Compelling writing is tailored to its audience. This is challenging, as writers may struggle to empathize with readers, get feedback in time, or gain access to the target group. We propose a concept that generates on-demand feedback, based on writer-defined AI personas of any target audience. We explore this concept with a prototype (using GPT-3.5) in two user studies (N=5 and N=11): Writers appreciated the concept and strategically used personas for getting different perspectives. The feedback was seen as helpful and inspired revisions of text and personas, although it was often verbose and unspecific. We discuss the impact of on-demand feedback, the limited representativity of contemporary AI systems, and further ideas for defining AI personas. This work contributes to the vision of supporting writers with AI by expanding the socio-technical perspective in AI tool design: To empower creators, we also need to keep in mind their relationship to an audience.