Gricea: An Open Science Platform for Conversational AI Research
Nikhil Sharma, Yunlin Gong, Xinyang Cheng, Ziang Xiao
This paper introduces Gricea, an open-science platform for conversational AI research that aims to facilitate large-scale studies, replication, and knowledge accumulation by providing a standardized way to report and deploy conversational AI research artifacts. Practitioners in the field of conversational AI can benefit from Gricea by being able to easily construct, reproduce, and extend existing studies.
Abstract
We need studies on conversational AI (CAI) at scale to understand human behavior and shape CAI design. However, fragmented reporting of systems and study configurations hinders replication, extension, and knowledge accumulation. We present Gricea, an open-science platform representing studies as configurable, deployable research artifacts that researchers can run, inspect, share, and reuse. Informed by a formative analysis of prior CAI research, Gricea couples study procedures, participant-facing systems, and conversational task behavior in. In a replication study using Gricea, we replicated configurations 93% of eligible CUI 2026 papers; while also flagging missing information in 96% of papers that hinder faithful replication --- further motivating Gricea's need. In a user study, researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds successfully constructed runnable studies addressing various open-ended research questions. Together, these findings demonstrate Gricea's support for constructing, reproducing, and extending CAI studies through shared research artifacts, enabling cumulative knowledge building through open science.