Improvised Comedy as a Turing Test
This work addresses the problem of human-AI co-creation in live performance for theatre practitioners and audiences, representing an incremental step in applying AI to artistic domains.
The researchers tackled the challenge of integrating AI into live improvisational theatre by developing an AI trained to perform alongside human actors and audiences. Over 30 performances with nearly 3000 attendees, they refined theatrical games and scene structures, ultimately creating a show that subjected audiences to a Turing test to observe their suspension of disbelief.
The best improvisational theatre actors can make any scene partner, of any skill level or ability, appear talented and proficient in the art form, and thus "make them shine". To challenge this improvisational paradigm, we built an artificial intelligence (AI) trained to perform live shows alongside human actors for human audiences. Over the course of 30 performances to a combined audience of almost 3000 people, we have refined theatrical games which involve combinations of human and (at times, adversarial) AI actors. We have developed specific scene structures to include audience participants in interesting ways. Finally, we developed a complete show structure that submitted the audience to a Turing test and observed their suspension of disbelief, which we believe is key for human/non-human theatre co-creation.