Program
Invited Speakers
Marie-Laure Ryan, independant scholar
Story generation, then and now, and why old programs were more intelligent. In this presentation I would like to compare TALE-SPIN by Jim Meehan to ChatGPT. While there is no question that ChatGPT is more productive and verbally more articulate, I claim that TALE-SPIN was able to understand the stories it generated and to answer questions about the motivations of characters because it was based on possible worlds theory, in the version articulated by Lucia Vaina, Umberto Eco and myself.
Marie-Laure Ryan is a native of Geneva and an independent scholar, based in Colorado. Her work on narrative, digital culture, and media theory was rewarded in 2017 with the Wayne Booth award for career accomplishment from the International Society for the Study of Narrative.
Andrew S. Gordon, University of Southern California
Abductive reasoning, distinct from deductive and inductive reasoning, has often been characterized as "inference to the best explanation." In this talk, I will argue that many aspects of narrative interpretation and storytelling can be readily modeled in terms of abductive reasoning, and that software algorithms for automated logical abduction offer an attractive foundation for computational models of narrative.
Andrew S. Gordon is a Research Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of Interactive Narrative Research at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California.
Schedule
Wednesday, 28 May 2025
| 8:30 | Welcome |
| 9:00 | Opening remarks |
| 9:30 | Paper session W1: Stories in games
Alessandro Maisto. Collaborative Storytelling and LLM: A Linguistic Analysis of Automatically-Generated Role-Playing Game Sessions Alexandra Barancová and Giovanni Sileno. Reviewing as storytelling? Louis Escouflaire. Unintentionally Breaking the Fifth Wall: How Generative AI Invites Metalepsis in Real Life |
| 10:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:00 | Paper session W2: Narrative bias and disinformation Roy Sommer and Horst Lohnstein. Narrative and the Immunization of Worldviews: Toward a New Research Paradigm Louis Escouflaire. Stereotypes in AI Stories: Identifying Societal Bias in Narratives Generated by Large Language Models Maria Antoniak, Peter Christensen, Srishti Yadav, Sarah Masud, Dustin Wright, Arnav Arora, Isabelle Augenstein and Serge Belongie. Position Paper: A Research Plan for Narrative Labels in the Modern Social Media Ecosystem |
| 12.30 | Lunch |
| 14:00 | Invited Speaker: Andrew Gordon |
| 15:30 | Coffee break |
| 16:00 - 17h45 | Paper session W3: Models for generation and understanding
Pablo Gervás. Basics of Narrative Interpretation: Physical Model and Character-Specific Views of the Storyworld Vincenzo Lombardo. Computational system for narratives with a concern for truth Rafael Pérez Y Pérez. How to evaluate a computer narrator that evaluates itself Nick Montfort. A Simple 1980s Story Machine with Lessons for Narrative |
| 19:30 | Dinner event |
Thursday, 29 May 2025
| 9:00 | Paper session T1: Interactive narrative
Sandrine Barbois, Rémi Ronfard and Nicolas Szilas Narrative Acts in the Operating Theater Jeongyoon Park, Yun-Gyung Cheong and Byung-Chull Bae Empowering Players as Story Creators: A Character-Centric Interactive Fiction Generation System Jules Clerc, Domitile Lourdeaux, Mohamed Sallak, Johann Barbier and Marc Ravaine Modeling Interactive Narrative Systems: A Formal Approach |
| 10:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:00 | Paper session T2: Narrative theories and models
Marie-Francine Moens. Deep Learning for Understanding of Narratives: What Is Still Missing? Inderjeet Mani. Automatic Narration of Movies via NarrativeML Cheng-En Tsai, Fanfan Chen and Jane Yung-Jen Hsu. Integrating Todorov’s Narrative Framework in Dialogue Management of An Oral History Interview Chatbot |
| 12.30 | Lunch |
| 14:00 | Invited Speaker: Marie-Laure Ryan |
| 15:30 | Coffee break |
| 16:00 - 17h30 | Paper session T3: Models for analysis and evaluation
Enrica Zanin and Demian Battaglia. Modelling the impact of censorship on early modern literary texts Nicholas Paige and Aaron Culich. The Scenification of the Novel in the Time of Jane Austen. Cosimo Palma and Florentina Armaselu. FracTale: Assessing the Correlation Between Narrative Beauty and Self-Similarity in Grimm's Folktales |
Friday, 30 May 2025
| 9:00 | Round table: Narrative models at the crossroad
Pablo Gervás, Andrew Gordon, Vincenzo Lombardo, Inderjeet Mani, Nick Montfort, Marie-Laure Ryan. |
| 10:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:00 | Open discussion: the future of the CMN community |
| 12.00 - 12:30 | Closing remarks |
Note: all lunches and the dinner event are included in the registration fee.