# GhostWriter: Augmenting Collaborative Human-AI Writing Experiences Through Personalization and Agency

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.08855 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.08855/

## Key facts

- Cited by 18 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 97 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [Fantastically Ordered Prompts and Where to Find Them: Overcoming Few-Shot Prompt Order Sensitivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08786/) (2021)
- [Benchmarking Large Language Models for News Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13848/) (2023)
- [LaMP: When Large Language Models Meet Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11406/) (2023)
- [CoAuthor: Designing a Human-AI Collaborative Writing Dataset for Exploring Language Model Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06796/) (2022)
- [Does Writing with Language Models Reduce Content Diversity?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05196/) (2023)
- [Co-Writing Screenplays and Theatre Scripts with Language Models: An Evaluation by Industry Professionals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14958/) (2022)
- [Deep Learning for Text Style Transfer: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00416/) (2020)
- [Style Transfer in Text: Exploration and Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06861/) (2017)
- [Homogenization Effects of Large Language Models on Human Creative Ideation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01536/) (2024)
- [GPT4Rec: A Generative Framework for Personalized Recommendation and User Interests Interpretation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03879/) (2023)
- [The Butterfly Effect of Altering Prompts: How Small Changes and Jailbreaks Affect Large Language Model Performance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03729/) (2024)
- [A Neural Network Approach to Context-Sensitive Generation of Conversational Responses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.06714/) (2015)
- [Gmail Smart Compose: Real-Time Assisted Writing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00080/) (2019)
- [Pearl: Personalizing Large Language Model Writing Assistants with Generation-Calibrated Retrievers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09180/) (2023)
- [EvalLM: Interactive Evaluation of Large Language Model Prompts on User-Defined Criteria](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13633/) (2023)
- [Creative Writing with an AI-Powered Writing Assistant: Perspectives from Professional Writers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05030/) (2022)
- [CoEdIT: Text Editing by Task-Specific Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09857/) (2023)
- [SummIt: Iterative Text Summarization via ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14835/) (2023)
- [Teach LLMs to Personalize -- An Approach inspired by Writing Education](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07968/) (2023)
- [Less is More: Learning to Refine Dialogue History for Personalized Dialogue Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08128/) (2022)
- [Beyond Text Generation: Supporting Writers with Continuous Automatic Text Summaries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09323/) (2022)
- [Read, Revise, Repeat: A System Demonstration for Human-in-the-loop Iterative Text Revision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03685/) (2022)
- [Machine Teaching: A New Paradigm for Building Machine Learning Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06742/) (2017)
- [Writer-Defined AI Personas for On-Demand Feedback Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10433/) (2023)
- [Augmenting Neural Response Generation with Context-Aware Topical Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.01063/) (2018)
- [On Natural Language User Profiles for Transparent and Scrutable Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09403/) (2022)
- [The AI Ghostwriter Effect: When Users Do Not Perceive Ownership of AI-Generated Text But Self-Declare as Authors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03283/) (2023)
- [The Design Space of Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10547/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [CollabStory: Multi-LLM Collaborative Story Generation and Authorship Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12665/) (2024)
- [Reading Subtext: Evaluating Large Language Models on Short Story Summarization with Writers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01061/) (2024)
- [Which Contributions Deserve Credit? Perceptions of Attribution in Human-AI Co-Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18357/) (2025)
- [PromptPex: Automatic Test Generation for Language Model Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05070/) (2025)
- [Frankentext: Stitching random text fragments into long-form narratives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18128/) (2025)
- [Exploring Empty Spaces: Human-in-the-Loop Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01088/) (2024)
- [Intent Tagging: Exploring Micro-Prompting Interactions for Supporting Granular Human-GenAI Co-Creation Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18737/) (2025)
- [Ink and Individuality: Crafting a Personalised Narrative in the Age of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00026/) (2024)
- [TwIPS: A Large Language Model Powered Texting Application to Simplify Conversational Nuances for Autistic Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17760/) (2024)
- [Substance Beats Style: Why Beginning Students Fail to Code with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19792/) (2024)
- [Survey of User Interface Design and Interaction Techniques in Generative AI Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.22370/) (2024)
- [Explainability-Based Token Replacement on LLM-Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04050/) (2025)
- [Humanlike Cognitive Patterns as Emergent Phenomena in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15501/) (2024)
- [Vidmento: Creating Video Stories Through Context-Aware Expansion With Generative Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22013/) (2026)
- [Designing Proactive Thought Partners for Writing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.01588/) (2026)
- [Designing Human-AI Collaboration to Support Learning in Counterspeech Writing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03032/) (2024)
- [TreeWriter: AI-Assisted Hierarchical Planning and Writing for Long-Form Documents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12740/) (2026)
- [Exploring Learners' Expectations and Engagement When Collaborating with Constructively Controversial Peer Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13479/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) have become ubiquitous in providing different forms of writing assistance to different writers. However, LLM-powered writing systems often fall short in capturing the nuanced personalization and control needed to effectively support users -- particularly for those who lack experience with prompt engineering. To address these challenges, we introduce GhostWriter, an AI-enhanced design probe that enables users to exercise enhanced agency and personalization during writing. GhostWriter leverages LLMs to implicitly learn the user's intended writing style for seamless personalization, while exposing explicit teaching moments for style refinement and reflection. We study 18 participants who use GhostWriter on two distinct writing tasks, observing that it helps users craft personalized text generations and empowers them by providing multiple ways to control the system's writing style. Based on this study, we present insights on how specific design choices can promote greater user agency in AI-assisted writing and discuss people's evolving relationships with such systems. We conclude by offering design recommendations for future work.