What is the interpretant of a generated text?

For Peirce, a sign stands for an object to an interpreter, and it does so by producing a further sign in that interpreter: the interpretant. Meaning is this triadic relation. It belongs to no single term.

Three terms, one generated paragraph

Take a paragraph a language model writes in answer to a question about a historical event. The paragraph is the sign. Its apparent object is the event. The interpretant is the understanding the paragraph produces in the person who reads it.

The model contributes the material form of the sign through statistical continuation of text. The relation to the object and the production of an interpretant both depend on the reader, who supplies a world in which the event took place and a practice in which the paragraph is put to use.

Immediate, dynamic and final

Peirce distinguishes three interpretants (CP 8.343). The immediate interpretant is the meaning a sign is fit to produce. The dynamic interpretant is the effect it actually produces on a given occasion. The final interpretant is the effect it would produce under sufficient inquiry.

Habit as the measure

Peirce places the ultimate logical interpretant in habit change (CP 5.476). For information science the question then becomes practical: which habits of reading, citing and trusting does generated text cultivate?

A reader who learns to accept fluent text as warranted text has acquired a habit. At scale, that habit is the interpretant of generated text, and it is the proper object of study for digital semiotics.