AI-assisted narrative design: a model of human-AI collaborative creativity in popularizing digital journalism articles

This article presents an applied case study on a collaborative creativity model between a journalist and a generative artificial intelligence (AI-G) in the weekly production of digital articles for popular science. For 60 weeks, the author published in the Ecuadorian newspaper La Hora a series of texts written from a speculative and educational perspective, accompanied by AI-generated images, designed through prompts designed to complement the narrative approach of each installment. The aim of this research is to analyze how the use of generative AI, consciously integrated by the journalist into their creative process, transforms the dynamics of content production, enhances the symbolic expressiveness of scientific dissemination and configures a replicable model of human-AI co-creation in digital media. The methodology employed follows a longitudinal and qualitative approach, with systematic documentation of the author’s creative workflow. From the selection of the topic, writing the text, designing the prompt, generating and curating the image, to publishing it in a newspaper. The results show that the collaboration with AI made it possible to represent abstract scientific concepts through images with high evocative value, enriching the reading experience and expanding the scope of the texts. The analysis reveals that AI functioned as a generative interlocutor that not only provided visuality, but also influenced the journalist’s language and narrative rhythm, while generating unexpected and suggestive responses. The implications of this model in terms of creative agency, evolution of the author’s abilities to interact with AI, and new ethical challenges around visual authorship and generative aesthetics are discussed. This experience shows that AI can be incorporated into the journalistic exercise not as an automated tool, but as a semiotic collaborator that expands the expressive possibilities of narrative journalism in digital contexts of scientific dissemination.