Before the Technological Fix: Scoping AI and AAC for Social Futures

Growing HCI interest in applying AI to Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) technologies is timely and encouraging. However, this work would benefit from closer alignment with contemporary AAC research. Recent HCI contributions have prioritised linguistic efficiency and technological capability, often reflecting sender–receiver communication models rather than the collaborative, multimodal, and contextually distributed approaches emphasised in AAC scholarship. We argue that HCI research could be strengthened by adopting broader conceptual models that better account for social interaction. This work-in-progress reports initial findings from a 20-year scoping review of ACM and Scopus literature examining how AI has been framed in AAC design. Most papers (43/65) positioned problems as connected with technological factors, whilst some addressed bodily factors (19/65), and fewer addressed temporal-relational factors in conversation (11/65). We see valuable opportunities for the CHI community to prioritise social interaction and participation alongside technological innovation in future AAC and AI research.