Understanding How Paper Writers Use AI-Generated Captions in Figure Caption Writing

Understand

Figures and their captions play a key role in scientific publications.

• However, despite their importance, many captions in published papers are poorly crafted, largely due to a lack of attention by paper authors.
• While prior AI research has explored caption generation, it has mainly focused on reader-centered use cases, where users evaluate generated captions rather than actively integrating them into their writing.
• This paper addresses this gap by investigating how paper authors incorporate AI-generated captions into their writing process through a user study involving 18 participants.