Explanations as Dialogues: Toward Human-Centered Conversational Explainable AI
Human-Computer Interaction
2026-05-28 v1
Abstract
As AI systems become increasingly conversational, a gap emerges wherein explanations are studied as static artifacts, yet in practice, are experienced as dialogue. In this provocation, we argue that the conversational layer around an explanation is not incidental to its effectiveness, but a critical constituent. Drawing on three illustrative scenarios, we invite the CUI community to study explanations as interactive, conversational exchanges shaped by timing, tone, persona and conversational history, and introduce our vision for Human-Centered Conversational XAI (HC2XAI).
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.27666,
title = {Explanations as Dialogues: Toward Human-Centered Conversational Explainable AI},
author = {Niharika Mathur and Smit Desai},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.27666},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
To be published in the ACM Conversational User Interfaces (CUI)'26 Conference as Provocation