Computer-Supported Human Creativity and Human-Supported Computer Creativity in Language

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with human–computer collaboration to achieve linguistic creativity. We claim that humans and computers may benefit from each other during the creativity process and we demonstrate concrete examples of sys-tems that allow different degrees of interaction with the user. Then, we focus on computer-supported human creativity, where the computer necessarily requires hu-man intervention, either for providing input or decisions that are essential to the sys-tem, or for deciding which outputs are interesting since the computer lacks a quality metric. As examples of systems modeling computer-supported human creativity, we describe GRAPHLAUGH, an interactive system which produces humorous puns by modifying familiar expressions, and SUBVERTISER, a mobile application that allows users to creatively alter the message contained in pictures of posters, bill-boards, and advertisements. Finally, we focus on human-supported computer cre-ativity, where the burden of the creative process is mainly on the computer, while the human simply mediates the process during key steps whenever required. As an example modeling this type of creativity, we introduce HEADY-LINES, which au-tomatically generates creative headlines combining a well-known expression with a concept from the news.