  Data storytelling plays an important role in data workers' daily jobs since
it boosts team collaboration and public communication. However, to make an
appealing data story, data workers spend tremendous efforts on various tasks,
including outlining and styling the story. Recently, a growing research trend
has been exploring how to assist data storytelling with advanced artificial
intelligence (AI). However, existing studies may focus on individual tasks in
the workflow of data storytelling and do not reveal a complete picture of
humans' preference for collaborating with AI. To better understand real-world
needs, we interviewed eighteen data workers from both industry and academia to
learn where and how they would like to collaborate with AI. Surprisingly,
though the participants showed excitement about collaborating with AI, many of
them also expressed reluctance and pointed out nuanced reasons. Based on their
responses, we first characterize stages and tasks in the practical data
storytelling workflows and the desired roles of AI. Then the preferred
collaboration patterns in different tasks are identified. Next, we summarize
the interviewees' reasons why and why not they would like to collaborate with
AI. Finally, we provide suggestions for human-AI collaborative data
storytelling to hopefully shed light on future related research.
