TaleBot: A Tangible AI Companion to Support Children in Co-creative Storytelling for Resilience Cultivation

2026-02-26

AI Summary

This study addresses the lack of effective human–AI interaction mechanisms in existing interventions for children’s psychological resilience. To bridge this gap, the authors propose TaleBot, an embodied AI companion system that uniquely integrates generative artificial intelligence with embodied interaction to guide children in co-creating narratives grounded in their own adverse experiences, thereby facilitating emotional expression. The system synergistically connects school and home environments to enable coordinated support, leveraging co-creation intent modeling and context-aware story generation. Empirical results demonstrate that TaleBot significantly enhances children’s self-expression, improves teachers’ capacity for personalized guidance, and deepens parents’ understanding of the role of family communication in supporting children’s mental health.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Embodied AI
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic ramifications for generative AI infrastructure and applications
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

Resilience is a key factor affecting children's mental wellbeing and future development. Yet, limited HCI research has explored how to help children build resilience through adversarial experiences. Informed by a formative study with elementary school teachers and professional psychologists, we design TaleBot, an AI-empowered system that supports children to co-create stories about overcoming everyday adversities tailored to their personal situations. We evaluated the system with 12 elementary children in school counseling rooms under teacher guidance and conducted reflective interviews with parents upon the Child-AI co-created stories. The findings show that TaleBot encourages children in self-expression of feelings and thoughts, creating opportunities for teachers to provide personalized support and for parents to better understand the profound impact of family communication on children's mental wellbeing. We conclude with design implications for using generative AI to support children's mental health education and interventions across school and family contexts.

Problem

• resilience
• children
• mental wellbeing
• adversity
• co-creative storytelling

Innovation

• generative AI
• tangible AI companion
• co-creative storytelling
• resilience cultivation
• child mental health