As artificial intelligence shifts from pure tool for delegation toward agentic collaboration, its use in the arts can shift beyond the exploration of machine autonomy toward synergistic co-creation. While our earlier robotic works utilized automation to distance the artist's intent from the final mark, we present Companion: an artistic apparatus that integrates a drawing robot with Large Language Models (LLMs) to re-center human-machine presence. By leveraging in-context learning and real-time tool use, the system engages in bidirectional interaction via speech and sketching. This approach transforms the robot from a passive executor into a playful co-creative partner capable of driving shared visual storytelling into unexpected aesthetic territories. To validate this collaborative shift, we employed the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) with a panel of seven art-world experts. Results confirm that the system produces works with a distinct aesthetic identity and professional exhibition merit, demonstrating the potential of AI as a highly capable artistic collaborator.
@article{arxiv.2603.05511,
title = {An Embodied Companion for Visual Storytelling},
author = {Patrick Tresset and Markus Wulfmeier},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.05511},
year = {2026}
}