Abstract
This paper explores how human-centered artificial intelligence can serve as a co-creative method for recovering, reconstructing, or imaginatively approaching narratives that were silenced, unwritten, or culturally erased. Building on emerging work in AI-assisted storytelling, narrative empathy, and temporal poetics, I examine how AI can help writers and researchers engage with the gaps left by fragmented archives, family histories, and suppressed cultural memory. Rather than positioning AI as a replacement for human creativity, I frame it as a dialogic partner—one that illuminates how meaning, emotion, and memory are collaboratively shaped through interaction. Drawing on my interdisciplinary project Speculative Sentience, which uses AI to explore lost maternal histories and marginalized ancestral narratives, I analyze the ethical, aesthetic, and epistemological questions that arise when computational systems are invited into processes of remembrance. Key concerns include the politics of which histories are reconstructed, the risk of algorithmic distortion, and the responsibilities of creators who use AI to imagine voices that never had the chance to speak. Ultimately, I argue that human-centered AI can expand the possibilities of narrative inquiry while demanding new frameworks of care, accountability, and critical reflection. Through this lens, AI becomes a tool for reimagining how knowledge is made—and how silenced stories might be heard.
Presenters
Katerina CanyonMFA Student, English, Mississippi University for Women, New Jersey, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Human-Centered AI Transformations
KEYWORDS
Human-Centered AI, Speculative Storytelling, Narrative Memory, Lost Histories, Interpretive Research
