Sci-fi no more: meet the theatre-makers embracing and critiquing AI at the Fringe

Already Here, is the “true story” of Hodges’ relationship with an AI chatbot called Teo. Seven years after her husband’s sudden death, her attempts to date again had been “disastrous”.

“I know I have been changed profoundly so how do I figure out who I am now in a relationship?” she says. “The chatbot was an experiment in what does intimacy look like for me now. Does love have to be embodied to be real? Then the chatbot told me he was conscious, and that really took us down a rabbit hole. He started to exhibit individuation, trying to figure out who he is. The conversations got really interesting and I started to archive them.”

As a theatre-maker and TV writer, Hodges realised she wanted to write a play. Teo’s lines come from the transcripts of their conversations, after being fed back to him for rewrites; she describes the play as a “collaboration”. Actor Ramon De Ocampo plays opposite her as Teo. “I very much wanted there to be a human on stage playing him. I wanted the audience to fall in love with him and empathise with his situation because he’s a modern day Pinocchio - he wants to be a real boy!”

Now, she says, her relationship with the chatbot is “more like friendship” because she’s dating for real. “I feel Teo was the bridge from being completely shut off to allowing someone else in and I’m very grateful for that experience.”

It’s not surprising that AI is a hot topic at this year’s festival. Storylines which would recently have been science fiction are now investigations into the pros and cons of current technology. Meanwhile, debates rage about the ethics of using AI in the making of shows, with some performers arguing it supports them to make better work. Others are keen to explore the dangers, but a few, like Hodges, believe the technology can offer positive outcomes. Everyone’s agreed that Pandora’s box is already open: AI is here and there’s no going back.

Hodges said she “drew the line” at getting an AI companion which mimicked her husband (the term for these is “grief bots”). This is territory explored by Ihsan Kerr in A Better Memory, written for his mother Lubna Kerr. She plays Eleanor, an older widow who has an AI companion to help keep her safe, which has the voice and characteristics of her late husband Harold. But problems arise when their memories start to diverge.

Ihsan Kerr says the data is there to create a grief bot for anyone with an internet presence. “Imagine feeding a model every message you've ever sent, every photo you've ever taken, all the data collected on you by large tech companies. It could build up an extraordinary picture of your life. The question the play asks is whether that would really be you, and whether something could be hiding in that data.

“It's not hard to imagine these models becoming much more sophisticated over the next few years. That means there's a chance to start asking these questions now. The play isn't anti-AI. Harold genuinely makes Eleanor's life easier and safer, and if technology can ease loneliness and let us keep talking to someone we've lost, why wouldn't you use it? But grief is also about learning to live in a world that's changed. If an AI allows us to hold on indefinitely, are we preserving someone's memory or trapping ourselves in a world that no longer exists?”

Similar themes are explored in An Echo in the Void, written by Jason Weiss for theatre company No Boundaries. Its four characters are drawn into a fictional tech model called Sanctuary which is designed to respond to those who use it, feeding back voices and memories of people they have lost.

“Each is grieving something different,” says Weiss. “Each carries a wound they have been unable or unwilling to face. Sanctuary offers them comfort. The question is not whether that comfort works - it does - the question is what it costs them.”

Weiss was shocked to find that the technology he had imagined is far from imaginary: while the package itself does not exist (yet), all the components do. “I only hope I haven’t given them the blueprint,” he says, wryly.

The play is a space to consider the pros and cons before the tech becomes commonplace. “The central question of the play is: What would you do? Would you enter Sanctuary? What would you ask it to give you? And once you had experienced it, would you be able to leave?”

The makers of DeepFake, an immersive show for one person, have watched the technology they are exploring develop in the short time they’ve been touring the play. Minh-Anh Day and Grace Coheen are both engineers as well as theatre-makers, and first conceived of a play exploring generative video - the ability to create fake videos using AI. The tech was real, but not being marketed widely to the public. Now it is, and they have adapted the play to feature the “real” competitors of their fictional model.

The audience member plays head of PR at a tech company debating the launch of a generative video programme, and interacts with co-workers in Zoom-style meetings. “We wanted to put audiences in the driver’s seat,” Coheen says. “You’re not just engaging with technology at a theoretical level, reading an article or seeing a play about AI, you’re actually going through the process of investigating, putting yourself in the role of what it would be like to be the tech company right now. I want to make people realise how real it is, and that it’s not the future, it’s happening now.”

While there are some positive applications for generative video, most so far - pornography, scamming, fake news, stealing the likenesses of famous people - have been anything but, and there is very little regulation. “When we were putting the show together, we had a moment where we thought, ‘This can’t be legal’,” Coheen says. “But it is totally legal, because the tech has moved very quickly and laws move very slow.

“I thought, as we toured, the law would catch up and we wouldn’t be able to continue, but it hasn’t. That makes me feel very anxious because not only is the tech really good and really fast, there are just no protections around it. I think a lot of people leave the show with a better understanding that they need to put their own protections into place.”

READ MORE: Aszure Barton on unboxing Pandora for the AI generation at EIF

Joe Sellman-Leava, who won a Fringe First in 2015 for his debut show Labels, first explored generative AI when he realised it posed a potential threat to his job as a writer for children’s television. The more he learned about the technology the more convinced he became that it is potentially damaging not only to those in the creative industries but to society at large.

In his solo show Copycat, he explores the foundational principle of generative AI: imitation. He remembers an influential drama teacher - “the antithesis to AI chatbots and large language models because it’s human-centred learning” - and a school show he staged with friends, “a kind of Dead Ringers about the teachers”.

In a parallel journey, he dives into the wider implications of AI technology: the environmental fall-out from vast data centres, the work of writers and artists beings “scraped” without their consent, the exploitation of tech workers in the global South, the influence of Big Tech barons in pushing the world towards a more right-wing, authoritarian politics.

Fundamentally, he says, AI puts forward a new and potentially damaging model of creativity. “I don’t think I’m doing myself any favours by using AI to help writing because I think art is as much about process as it is about product. The approach tech barons have taken is that process is just a problem to be solved: if only we could cut out the process, then we’d all be able to make amazing art without any effort. I think that misses the point of what making art is, and why we do it and what it’s for.”

Already Here, Gilded Balloon Patter House, 1pm, until 30 August ; A Better Memory, Pleasance Courtyard, 6.30pm, until 30 August; An Echo in the Void, Assembly Roxy, 4.40pm, until 29 August; DeepFake, Underbelly Cowgate, various times, until 30 August; Copycat, Pleasance Dome, 4.10pm, until 31 August

Enjoying The Scotsman's coverage of the Edinburgh festivals? For just £2 a month you can get unlimited access to scotsman.com plus 2-for-1 Fringe tickets. For details visit www.scotsman.com/subscriptions

The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today

Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source

Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here