Move Beyond The Scroll: How AI is Revolutionising Interactive Storytelling On The Web

The World Wide Web was once only static pages. Today, it’s ‘feeds’ of endless scrolls, whether on the web, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter) or LinkedIn. But the worldwide ‘dynamic’ web is at the precipice of another change; the participatory web.

For content creators, brands, industries even, the challenge is far beyond ‘capturing and retaining attention.’ The old model was that of passive consumption, we read long articles, watched video essays (and we still enjoy both, tremendously) but something about passivity is losing ground to the ‘experiential’ something that demands agency from the user, giving them that something more. Don’t just watch the story; live or be in it.

And fittingly so, all of this and more is possible in the era of rapidly evolving AI. By integrating AI tools into web design and narrative structures, creators can now build ‘living’, participatory stories that have the ability to adapt, evolve, and respond to every user's input.

Is this the new model of engagement? Perhaps. Is the currency of engagement shifted from attention retention to active capture and participation? Definitely.

We are All Players

Web storytelling is uni-dimensionally linear. An article follows a narrative structure, an idea is written in an article, and your audience of say 10,000 all read the exact same content.

‘Interactive’ storytelling is seeking to break this linearity. Think of a feedback loop where the user's actions influence the content.

Very much like a Choose your own adventure novel, where you’re input shifts the narrative, but more dynamic.

AI is supercharging this by removing the need for creators to manually script every possible outcome. So now, going back to our example, instead of writing a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book with say three ending paths, you can use a Large Language Model (LLM) to generate infinite paths based on user choices, each as unique as the user.

Three ways AI is reshaping web narratives:

1. Chatbots are getting smarter, better and adaptive: The Digi Twin

Chatbots used to be clumsy customer support tools. Now, they are turning into ‘main character’ engines. Here’s an example of what a truly ‘smart’ chatbot can do.

In massive conglomerates, the ‘human connect’ with leadership is often lost. New joiners in remote offices rarely see the Group Chairman. Onboarding is often a boring click-through PDF that no one remembers.

Instead of a static ‘Welcome Letter’ from the Chairman, imagine an interactive ‘Digital Twin’ of the leader waiting on the onboarding portal.

You record the Chairman once. Using tools like Synthesia or HeyGen, you create an interactive avatar. Then a new management trainee can type/ask: "What is your vision for sustainability?" or "What was your first job here?" The ‘Chairman’ answers instantly, and uses the leader's actual voice.

Synthesia is already being used by 50% of the Fortune 100 for this exact purpose, turning text-based training into video-led communication without filming new footage every week.

2. It wants you in on the ‘creation’

Static ‘stock’ images are slowly becoming a thing of the past, personalised visuals are becoming the next big thing. We saw early glimpses of this with campaigns like Nutella’s "Unica", which used algorithms to generate 7 million unique packaging designs.

Now imagine an internal campaign on ‘Company Values’ for a large conglomerate. Instead of sending a passive email or a PDF to 50,000 employees, you build an interactive microsite. An employee logs in and is asked: "What does 'Sustainability' look like to you?" The employee types (with the help of specific prompts): "A futuristic city powered by wind energy with vertical gardens."

An image generation API (like Midjourney or DALL-E 3) instantly renders this specific vision as a high-quality digital art piece. The employee feels a sense of ownership because they co-created this asset. These individual pieces can then be stitched together dynamically to form a ‘Vision 2030’ co-creation wall on the company intranet.

3. The "Talking" website

We are moving toward ‘multimodal’ interactions. Expertise.ai and similar platforms have experimented with ‘talking websites’ where a video avatar greets you. Instead of navigating a menu, you simply ask, ‘Show me your best work from 2024, and the site navigates itself.

Integrated Annual Reports (IARs) are expensive to produce, data-heavy, and notoriously unread. Stakeholders (investors, journalists, employees) rarely scroll past page 5.

Instead, you feed the 300-page Annual Report into a secure LLM (like a private instance of GPT-4). And when a user lands on the Annual Report microsite, they don't see a Table of Contents. They see a microphone icon. The user might ask, "How much did we spend on CSR initiatives in rural India last year?”

The site automatically scrolls to the relevant graph, highlights the data point, and a voiceover summarises the answer: "We invested so and so Crores in rural development, an x% increase from 2024. Here is the breakdown..."

Front-end AI genius: Nike’s ‘Never Done Evolving’ campaign

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Nike, together with AKQA studios traveled back in time to create a match-up between Serena from her first Grand Slam at the 1999 US Open versus her most recent at the 2017 Australian Open. Using AI to analyse archival footage of Serena Williams, they created a virtual match between "1999 Serena" and "2017 Serena." Leveraging the vid2player technique, developed by Stanford University, Nike successfully animated models of Serena Williams. They achieved this by re-rendering different generations of players into a completely new scene, making them appear to interact and play against one another. The web implementation allowed users to dive into the data, visualising the evolution of her playstyle.

To conclude…

The internet is shifting from passive viewing to active engagement and conversation, largely driven by sophisticated AI tools. This AI now makes it easy for anyone to create complex, personalised, choice-driven stories—a capability once exclusive to AAA games.

This also means completely rethinking digital presence. A "world" is a smart digital space that reacts to users, remembers past actions, generates on-the-spot content, and offers non-linear paths —the core of the conversational and a worldwide ‘generative’ web.

TIC, with over two decades of experience working with some of the leading conglomerates in the world, understands firsthand that the best stories are those that can help people participate in. We are bridging the gap between human creativity and AI innovation. Let’s move beyond the scroll. Contact us today, to discuss how we can turn your static presence into an active, breathing, dynamic and generative presence.