Kunstig Humor – Improv theater meets AI

This fall, I've been assisting the comedy group Vrøvl in setting up a show where improvisers and the audience interact with AI live on stage.

We have shows every third Tuesday of the month, and the next one is on November 21 at Salt Oslo.

What is this show "Kunstig Humor"?

In case you're not quite sure what improv theater is, it simply involves creating a comedy show without a script.

The improvisers receive suggestions from the audience and create a story on the spot. It's a very fun and interactive form of theater, and the audience gets to contribute to what happens on stage.

What's different about the concept of Kunstig Humor is that AI also contributes to what happens on stage. Specifically, large language models like GPT-4 and image generation with DALL·E are used as inputs for the improvisers.

The show culminates in a competition between AI and humans to be the funniest. The audience selects the winner 🏆

The technology behind

I'm not an improviser myself, but I contribute as the character "CryptoJack". I'm a hacker who has managed to hack into the AI systems and can thus provide input to the improvisers 👨🏼‍💻

At least that's the official story. To put it more precisely, in technical terms, I've developed some fancy hacker-looking interfaces on top of OpenAI's APIs, quite similiar to what we're all familiar with on chat.openai.com.

What I’ve learned from this

Four shows down the road, and I've learned a lot about "live coding" on stage. We all know the demo gods are not always on our side, and I've had my fair share of bugs and issues.

First of all, you can't control what the AI is going to produce, and that kinda keeps me on the edge through the show, haha. I guess that just fits neatly into the improv concept, but it's still a bit thrilling when you're on stage and the AI produces something that way different than what you got when prompt engineering the day before.

There's always some technical preperations to be made, so it's always smart to add at least 20 minutes of buffer time before the show starts. I've had to replace HDMI cables, fight with a decades old projector, and fix some last-minute bugs.

Last but not least, every mistake can be funny! I've had some bugs that have made the audience laugh, and I've learned to embrace it. The improvisers also certainly knows how to exploit them! It's a comedy show after all.