Digital writing with AI platforms: the role of fun with/in generative AI
English Teaching: Practice & Critique
ISSN: 1175-8708
Article publication date: 1 March 2024
Issue publication date: 8 April 2024
Abstract
Purpose
With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), it is important to consider how young people are making sense of these tools in their everyday lives. Drawing on critical postdigital approaches to learning and literacy, this study aims to center the experiences and perspectives of young people who encounter and experiment with generative AI in their daily writing practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This critical case study of one digital platform – Character.ai – brings together an adolescent and adult authorship team to inquire about the intertwining of young people’s playful and critical perspectives when writing on/with digital platforms. Drawing on critical walkthrough methodology (Light et al., 2018), the authors engage digital methods to study how the creative and “fun” uses of AI in youths’ writing lives are situated in broader platform ecologies.
Findings
The findings suggest experimentation and pleasure are key aspects of young people’s engagement with generative AI. The authors demonstrate how one platform works to capitalize on these dimensions, even as youth users engage critically and artfully with the platform and develop their digital writing practices.
Practical implications
This study highlights how playful experimentation with generative AI can engage young people both in pleasurable digital writing and in exploration and contemplation of platforms dynamics and structures that shape their and others’ literate activities. Educators can consider young people’s creative uses of these evolving technologies as potential opportunities to develop a critical awareness of how commercial platforms seek to benefit from their users.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the development of a critical and humanist research agenda around generative AI by centering the experiences, perspectives and practices of young people who are underrepresented in the burgeoning research devoted to AI and literacies.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Erratum: It has come to the attention of the publisher that the article, Stornaiuolo, A., Higgs, J., Jawale, O. and Martin, R.M. (2024), “Digital writing with AI platforms: the role of fun with/in generative AI”, English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 23 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-08-2023-0103 included an error in the sentence structure.
“… (Gutierrez et al., 2019a, 2019b, p. 291; Lizárraga, 2023)… ” has been amended to “… (Gutierrez et al., 2019a, 2019b, p. 291). Lizárraga (2023) …”
This error was introduced in the editorial process and has now been corrected in the online version. The publisher sincerely apologises for this error and for any inconvenience caused.
This paper was supported in part by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
Citation
Stornaiuolo, A., Higgs, J., Jawale, O. and Martin, R.M. (2024), "Digital writing with AI platforms: the role of fun with/in generative AI", English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 83-103. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-08-2023-0103
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited