AI-textuality: Expanding intertextuality to theorize human-AI interaction with generative artificial intelligence

This paper introduces the concept of AI-textuality that extends Bakhtin’s notion of intertextuality to encompass interactions involving texts produced by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Intertextuality provides a valuable lens for understanding how GenAI outputs are created through the assemblage of digital and multimodal texts from vast datasets. Building on this perspective, this paper presents a model to theorize the intertextual nature of AI-generated texts in educational settings. The model frames human-AI interaction as an interplay between humans’ experiences in a material space and GenAI’s computational processing in a digital space. Drawing on data from a high school classroom, the model illustrates how students engaged with GenAI to discuss key ideas in the lesson. It highlights how students’ engagement with AI-generated texts was shaped by their textualization of experiences, the intertextual probability of GenAI’s responses, and the joint construction of knowledge between students and GenAI. Through the illustration, the paper argues that AI-textuality has the potential to revise and expand traditional understandings of intertextuality to incorporate our interactions with GenAI in the digital age.