Some Emerging Communication Roles for Generative AI

Abstract

Understanding generative AI (GAI) from a communication perspective is challenging given the breadth of issues and perspectives that have emerged. To help distill these ideas and focus our conversation, this chapter proposes thinking about GAI in terms of the different communication roles that it fulfills. The roles of expert, copilot, interlocutor, and channel are presented with illustrations of each role taken from other contributions to this volume. Across the academy, scholars have mobilized to understand generative artificial intelligence (GAI) and foresee how GAI may alter the horizon of higher education.