Kahaani: A Multimodal Co-Creative Storytelling System

AbstractThis paper introduces Kahaani, a multimodal, co-creative storytelling system that leverages Generative Artificial Intelligence, designed for children to address the challenge of sustaining engagement to foster educational narrative experiences. Here we define co-creative as a collaborative creative process in which both the child and Kahaani contribute to the generation of the story. The system combines Large Language Model (LLM), Text-to-Speech (TTS), Text-to-Music (TTM), and Text-to-Video (TTV) generation to produce a rich, immersive, and accessible storytelling experience. The system grounds the co-creation process in two classical storytelling framework, Freytag’s Pyramid and Propp’s Narrative Functions. The main goals of Kahaani are: (1) to help children improve their English skills, (2) to teach important life lessons through story morals, and (3) to help them understand how stories are structured, all in a fun and engaging way. We present evaluations for each AI component used, along with a user study involving three parent–child pairs to assess the overall experience and educational value of the system.