AI and stand up comedy

Making audiences laugh is big business, and over the past decade the stand-up comedy market in the US has almost tripled, external in terms of the combined value of tickets sold. That is according to data from trade publication Pollstar, which monitors the live performance sector. It says US comedy ticket sales hit $900m (£700m) in 2023, up from $371m in 2012.

Meanwhile, a separate study last month said that live comedy was now worth more than £1bn, external a year to the UK economy. This figure includes not just ticket sales, but also the revenues of comedy venues and festivals, and the positive impact on the wider local economies.

US comedian Viv Ford is also performing at this month’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Her show is called “No Kids On The Blockchain”, and details her time living with “14 tech-loving crypto [currency] bros in San Francisco”.

Though she wrote the show herself, she explains she tested her material on ChatGPT.

“I’ll say, ‘hey, is this joke funny?’. And if it says ‘it’s funny’, genuinely, it does not land with an audience,” says Viv. “But if it says a joke ‘is offensive’ it does so well.

“And sometimes ChatGPT will say ‘the joke is fine, but could use some work’, in which case I toss it away and start again.”

Viv knows that lots of people won’t be so embracing of AI in the arts. It’s a view she used to take until she lived in San Francisco, where so many tech firms are based.

“I’m so aware that the only reason I think this way is because of my four-year indoctrination in the school of San Francisco,” she says. “I realised AI can be your weapon, just like Google can be your weapon. If you know how to use AI correctly, you are unstoppable.”