What if one of the participants in the communication spiral is not human?
What happens when a person interacts with a system that processes language, generates responses, and returns them to the human world?
Communication acquires a sociotechnical dimension. One initial reaction might be to consider artificial intelligence as a channel or a tool. A person writes a message, the machine processes it, and returns a response. The communicative act would still be understood as occurring between human beings.
However, let us consider what happens in practice. A person consults an AI system to prepare a report. That report reaches an institution. The institution uses part of its content to make a decision. That decision generates new data that are processed by another system. Finally, a person receives the result and reacts to it.
Throughout this process, AI does not function as a transparent conduit. It intervenes in the trajectory of meaning. It selects, organizes, transforms, synthesizes, and generates language. It does not possess human intention, consciousness, or experience, but its operations become part of a communicative chain whose effects continue beyond the initial interaction.
In Craig’s (1999) constitutive model of communication, communication is not reduced to the transmission of information. It is an activity through which social realities are constructed and maintained.
Who transforms whom when we introduce AI into the spiral?
The user transforms the interaction with the system by determining, through questions, instructions, corrections, and decisions, the type of response being sought. At the same time, the system’s response also transforms the user. It may modify their interpretation of a problem, introduce an idea they had not considered, reorganize an argument, or even change the way they formulate their next question.
A feedback relationship emerges. Each intervention can become the starting point for the next, and each response can become the context for a new response.
Let us consider this on a broader scale. A person asks a question. The AI responds. The person interprets that response. They incorporate it into a conversation. Another person reacts. The institution modifies its position. The new information enters an AI system again. The system produces a new output. The community interprets that output. And the process continues. There is no single point at which we can say, “This is where communication began” or “This is where it ended.”
Where is the communicative act?
Not in any isolated element. It is found in the continuous circulation and transformation of meaning among human actors, technological systems, and institutions.
Recent research on Human–Machine Communication suggests that interactions with virtual agents, conversational systems, and software capable of generating language do not fit neatly within traditional models centered exclusively on human communication (Guzman & Lewis, 2019).
Human beings contribute experience, intention, interpretation, and decision-making. AI contributes computational processing, content generation, and the transformation of information. Institutions contribute norms, procedures, authority, and decision-making structures. Communities contribute collective interpretation, acceptance, rejection, circulation, and resignification.
Who is the author of meaning in this sociotechnical spiral?
When an AI-generated output enters a human practice, it acquires consequences within social, professional, and institutional relationships. AI may participate in the production of a message, but people and institutions remain the ones who interpret, validate, use, and act upon that message. Authorship cannot be attributed to a single participant.
How does meaning transform as it moves through the different participants in the spiral?
Artificial intelligence does not have to be considered human to become part of a communicative process. It is enough to recognize that its operations intervene in the social circulation of meaning and that those meanings can produce effects beyond the initial interaction.
The spiral no longer revolves solely around human beings. It revolves around networks in which humans, technologies, and institutions transform one another.
References
Contino, L. (2026). Communication as a Spiral: Theory and Linguistic Perspectives.
Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication Theory. Oxford Academic, 9(2).
Guzman, A. L., & Lewis, S. C. (2019). Artificial intelligence and communication: A Human–Machine Communication research agenda. New Media & Society, 22(1).