AI Cat Narrator: Designing an AI Tool for Exploring the Shared World and Social Connection with a Cat

TL;DR

The paper presents the AI Cat Narrator, a novel AI tool that uses ethnography and fictional storytelling to foster social connection and shared understanding between humans and cats.

Contribution

It introduces an innovative approach combining real-world data and fiction to create empathetic, individualized cat characters, and develops a collaborative AI tool for exploring human-cat relationships.

Findings

Defamiliarized data enhances character empathy and individuality.

The tool encourages reevaluation of human-cat coexistence.

Fosters collaborative exploration among humans, cats, and AI.

Abstract

As technology continues to advance, the interaction between humans and cats is becoming more diverse. Our research introduces a new tool called the AI Cat Narrator, which offers a unique perspective on the shared lives of humans and cats. We combined the method of ethnography with fictional storytelling, using a defamiliarization strategy to merge real-world data seen through the eyes of cats with excerpts from cat literature. This combination serves as the foundation for a database to instruct the AI Cat Narrator in crafting alternative narrative. Our findings indicate that using defamiliarized data for training purposes significantly contributes to the development of characters that are both more empathetic and individualized. The contributions of our study are twofold: 1) proposing an innovative approach to prompting a reevaluation of living alongside cats; 2) establishing a collaborative, exploratory tool developed by humans, cats, and AI together.