AI for Revision
Vision
We are exploring how AI can support the writing process without diminishing human authorship. Building on our previous work with Textfocals1, an AI writing assistant that offers contextualized feedback through customizable prompts, we are now investigating how voice-based conversations with AI can enable writers to engage in thoughtful reflection on feedback and make substantive revisions.
Our research asks the following questions about the input modality of having a conversation with AI writing assistants:
- How might speaking to LLM-powered conversational agents, compared to typing, influence the depth and kinds of concerns writers reflect on in their work?
- How does engaging in spoken conversations with LLM-powered conversational agents, as opposed to text-based interactions, shape the way writers refine and revisit their own reflections?
- How do writers perceive the cognitive demands of speaking to LLM-powered conversational agents, compared to typing, and what factors influence these perceptions?
- How does reflecting with LLM-powered conversational agents influence the extent and depth of revisions in written content?
By answering these questions, we aim to inform the design of intelligent and interactive writing tools that support reflection through conversational exchanges with AI.
Team
Jiho Kim is a senior computer science student who is leading this project.
Philippe Laban is a senior research scientist at Microsoft Research, and Xiang ‘Anthony’ Chen is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles. They are both outside collaborators co-advising Jiho on this project.
Kenneth C. Arnold is an assistant professor of computer science and data science at Calvin University who is serving as the primary advisor on this project.
Code
Since this project is still ongoing (beyond the senior project submission), the code is not yet public.
Project Deliverables
This project has been accepted to the Fourth Workshop on Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants (In2Writing 2025) at the 2025 Annual Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL 2025) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Misc
This research is supported by NSF CRII award 2246145.
This project has been submitted to the Department of Computer Science at Calvin University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Computer Science degree by Jiho Kim.