Exploring Artists’ and Art Viewers’ Perspectives for Art Chatbots: Implications for a Design Framework

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) and conversational user interfaces (CUIs) unlock new ways to help art viewers get answers about artworks. To clarify the roles that artists and viewers envision for art chatbots, we conducted two empirical studies in the domain of traditional Chinese painting, given its cultural depth. First, we interviewed five artists about how they currently respond to viewer inquiries and their attitudes toward chatbots. Second, we asked art viewers (N=102) to pose questions to either an artist or a chatbot. Results show that artists see chatbots as useful for factual or repetitive queries but hesitate to entrust emotive or personal discussions to them. Viewers also favor chatbots for efficiency but desire human input for deeper or personal topics. Based on these insights, we propose a design framework that balances the perspectives of both artists and viewers, contributing to the CUI community's understanding of domain-specific chatbot design.