Events Panel – AI-generated Improvised Comedy Workshop, or “Whose Line AI Anyway?”

10th March 2025 from 6:00pm — 8:00pm • Information Technologists' Hall

Can AI be funny on purpose? Can AI respond to improvised situations in a way that is genuinely funny, even touchingly so?

Join us for an entertaining and educational evening of improvised comedy AI with Dr. Piotr Mirowski, Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind and co-founder of the critically-acclaimed troupe Improbotics. Since 2016, Improbotics have combined theatre and improvised comedy with state-of-the-art generative AI to create a combined science comedy show and live Turing test.

During the workshop, human improvisers are joined on-stage by A.L.Ex., an AI chatbot that tries to pass itself off as human, feeding lines to one of the players via augmented reality glasses. The other players must attempt to justify, physically and emotionally, AI-generated lines that may make no sense at all.

The result is an unpredictable work of human-machine hilarity and human creativity.

The evening will explore, in comical ways, ethical questions around deep fakes and human agency in the age of AI, as well as providing insights into real-world applications and implications for AI in the theatre and film and can talk to the way storytelling and performing are adapting to these developments.