Exclusive:AI: New Edinburgh Festival Fringe website to use artificial intelligence to make show suggestions

Society chief executive Tony Lankester said the website, which will launch ahead of the 2027 Fringe, was "not just papering over the cracks” or “trying to make something that is slightly wonky work better". He said the portal was a build "from the ground up" to improve user experience.

Mr Lankester said a parallel data project, looking at previous ticketing and user trends, would inform the web developers, as well as allowing venues to take a deep dive into their own data in the future to inform scheduling and promotion of shows.

“We know that audiences like using the website to plan their visit to Edinburgh in conjunction with the printed programme,” he said. “But there's so much that we can do on the website to smooth out the journey, to help them discover more.

“It ranges from basics, like fixing the way we filter shows and the way we surface shows for audiences as they are walking through the website - right up to sophisticated planning tools.”

Mr Lankester said the website could offer suggestions to visitors, but had to be careful to “tread a fine line” over the Fringe Society issuing recommendations. He said the algorithm would have to be “tweaked” to ensure smaller shows and less well-known performers were not underrepresented.

“We know from our customers that the single biggest challenge they have is that choice paralysis that they face. They see a listing of 4,000 shows and they're like ‘where do I even start?’

“Some people dive right in and they look for names that they recognise, or if they've been to the Fringe before, there might be specific venues that they feel an affinity for. But for someone stepping into the Fringe for the first time, it is hugely daunting.

“At the Fringe Society, we can't play favourites, so we can't say ‘here are ten shows that we recommend’. But I think it's understanding the customer, understanding the kinds of choices they've made already, the kinds of choices that other customers similar to them have made and offering them some options within that.”

He pointed to Amazon’s ability to make recommendations to customers.

“We obviously have to walk quite a fine line,” he said. “We can't make recommendations [like Amazon], but we can give people an idea of ‘have you considered this or that or the other’? But the tweaking of that algorithm, the basis on which specific shows are suggested to people, is quite a nuanced thing.”

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He added: “What you don't want to happen is for that algorithm to say, ‘here's a show that's extremely popular and 1,000s and 1,000s of people have booked for it’ - and to keep promoting that show at the expense of a smaller show that's playing in a smaller venue that doesn't have as much reach and capacity, but it's still worthy of people's attention.

“So the way we tweak that algorithm has to be fair for all the artists and also help audiences discover the unknowns and the hidden gems in the programme.”

Mr Lankester said digital agency Storm ID, which has been commissioned to create the new site, had already started work, talking to users during the Fringe, as well as Fringe Society staff, venues and producers. The project has been funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies as part of its Digital Accelerator programme, in association with Arts Council England.

The Fringe Society chief executive said Storm ID had proved they were “starting to talk the same language as us in terms of AI capability and some of the potential” of the Fringe site.

He said: “Whatever we build has to be flexible and future proof, and that's very much part of the brief that we've given. It's very rare that a festival has the time and space to do a really good deep dive into its web experience.

“I'm really excited about the project from that point of view, in that it's not just papering over the cracks or trying to make something that is slightly wonky work better. It's actually doing a proper build from the ground up, based on what our current and anticipated future needs are.”

Mr Lankester added: “The new work that's being done is literally from the ground up, saying ‘what is it that we need from a website? What are the pain points on the current website? What do we want to use the experience to be and how do we set about building that?’”

The Fringe Society app will not be given a major overhaul at the same time as the website due to a contract with existing developers, Australia-based EQU, running until 2029.

Me Lankester said trends in technology to move away from using dedicated apps and relying instead on a website would be unlikely to be implemented at the Fringe due to a “uniquely Edinburgh issue” of connectivity problems during the festivals, when mobile networks are overwhelmed by demand.

“What we want to avoid is a situation where people are stuck in a queue or trying to get into a venue and can't access their tickets,” he said.

However, Mr Lankester said the existing app could be updated by EQU to incorporate specific elements of "superior functionality" created for the website.

Meanwhile, a previously available feature that allowed website users to download their Fringe plans and timetables from the site into a spreadsheet, which was scrapped when a temporary website was installed two years ago, will be reinstated due to demand from customers.

Last month, Edinburgh International Festival chief executive Francesca Hegyi called for a “unified front door” and a joint ticketing platform to provide a simplified approach for visitors.

Mr Lankester acknowledged the discussions, but said his primary responsibility was to the Fringe and Fringe audiences. The Fringe Society already sells tickets for the Edinburgh International Film Festival through its platforms.

He said: “We are building this to respond to a very specific Fringe need, but it's not outside of the realms of possibility that we could add other festivals into that. It's very easily solvable from a tech point of view.”