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why are these musicals using AI?! | the growing problem with artificial intelligence on and offstage
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Well, this is a noteworthy day in the history of Mickey Joe Theater, everybody. This is the last video that I will be filming with hair because unfortunately, as a result of today's ensuing conversation, there's a high likelihood I'm going to tear it all out of my head. I'm about to say to you a sentence that I would not like anyone to say to me unless I happen to be holding my third margarita. And that is, can we please have a robust conversation about AI? More specifically, what is going on right now with AI in the theater industry, a place where it inherently does not belong, if indeed it belongs anywhere. It's 1am on a Thursday night and I am furious. Let's discuss. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this rant on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre. I am a content creator, a theater critic and a pundit here on social media. And this is a rant it's also Theatre News Update in response to various recent allegations of multiple productions here in the UK utilising generative AI on stage. But the conversation about AI in the theater industry is actually wider than that because instances of AI in promotional artwork and social media posts in various other places in the industry here in the UK and beyond are becoming more and more prolific with every disappointing day. Now, all of this on several occasions recently, actors have been asked what they think about AI in the theater industry in response to the encroachment of artificial intelligence into the entertainment industry, particularly on screen. And actors have optimistically, if perhaps naively said largely, I think theater is going to be unaffected by this and if anything, we're going to need theater all that much more because of everything that's happening with AI. And I have several thoughts about that and the potentially fatalistic future that I can envision theater and AI, which I will address and share with you at the very end of this conversation. What I will say though, is that we're not having a hypothetical conversation about what might happen if AI arrives in the theater industry. It's already here. So let's talk about that right now. Where are we seeing AI? And more importantly, why the hell are we seeing AI? Now, while I share my own rage stricken perspective and insights with you here, as always, I would love to hear yours. There is some room for debate if you in this topic. However, if anyone takes to the comment section here to let me know that AI is inevitable and we all simply have to deal with it, then I shall remind you that just because you say something is so, it does not make it the case. And the so called inevitability of a full embracing of AI in every facet of the human experience and society as largely propagated by, you guessed it, white male tech bros. The same ones who took business studies GCSE and now consider themselves to be aspirational entrepreneurs defending Elon Musk's every move on Twitter. That, like so many other things in society, is only inevitable if we allow ourselves to be convinced that it is. And on this front, as with so many others in the world right now, we ought instead to be reminded that we do actually have a choice. I am here to remind you we do have a choice. Let us not continue to make the wrong one. On which note, let's talk about it, theatre and AI. Now, to present this video essay with some semblance of my usual balance and nuance, let's first address the issues with AI. And I am not a tech expert, I am a theater pundit. And so I'm not going to present you all of the evidence that has been gathered, everything that has been said about AI. You can go and look up these think pieces, you can go and look into the studies. But there are plenty of reasons to object to the frivolous use of artificial intelligence, particularly the unnecessary use of artificial intelligence given its environmental impact. I don't know how many of you watched the film Erin Brockovich and paid attention to it, but she's back or she continues to be doing her good work and the impact on communities of various data centers around the U.S. i know I'm jumping between different continents when having this conversation, but none of it's good. You know, we've all seen so many examples of these stories. This is what I don't get about the world right now. This is a bit of a tangent. Humor me. Politically speaking, and with so many of these sort of faux entrepreneurial figures, all of these billionaires we have seen the likes of. I don't know why the Lego Movie is the first one entering my mind, but we have seen stories about these stereotypical villains and bullies and we know what the right answer is. We know who to root for. We recognize that on screen or on stage, we understand these fictional stories as they're presented to us. Why we can't recognize those same dangers, those same villains in our own world baffles me to no end. We know that when a big data center is being built in the local community, that that is going to have a negative impact. We know that that is something that we ought to be rooting against. We know when a suspicious new technology is arriving that's going to solve all of your problems, even though it seems to be having an impact on the local nature, even though it seems to be actively making you stupid, even though it promises so much, we know to be suspicious of that. We have learned from ancient stories not to trust the susp viciously generous Trojan horse. Anyway, if the environmental impact and the impact on communities isn't enough of a problem for you, and I would question why it isn't, There have been some fascinatingly troubling studies into the connection between AI and the creeping tide of fascism with the way that it's being utilized, with the increased influence that it is offering these tech giants. I for some time have been particularly disturbed by AI created footage that we have been seeing now on social media, these entirely fabricated and falsified videos that people are quite gullibly believing in the comments section. I'm concerned about the future of this as it continues to rapidly become more sophisticated in the way in which people can be misrepresented, an extension of which is the use of AI on particular fascist social media platforms to create lewd images of individuals in their own likeness without their permission or consent. And the ability to do this for underage persons as well. Which in better would have been the moment when somebody pulled the plug on the entire thing and said, you know what? This has gone too far. This simply cannot stand. But there was surprisingly little mass global backlash when this began happening. And all of this fascism, environmental issues, deceptive media, fake news. The last thing that I just talked about that I don't want to explicitly name, that ought to be enough for you. But here is my additional problem with AI, and this has always been my personal biggest grievance with it. It is making people dumber. Because you may say to yourself, well, I'm not using AI for any of those purposes. I'm not personally building a data center. Because of course you aren't. However, you may be one of the many people who has been using an allegedly innocuous AI chatbot such as ChatGPT in order to fulfill basic tasks like, you know, tell me what to pack for my holiday, tell me what to buy for my weekly shopping trip. I was capable of doing all of this five minutes ago, figuratively speaking. But now I'm utterly reliant on this technology, which is a hugely dangerous concept. And if I can refer you back to a lesson that I used to teach in my previous professional life as a GCSE maths teacher, the number one question that I was asked was probably, can we finish 10 minutes early? After that, the question I was asked was, why are we learning to solve equations? Why is GCSE maths mandatory? Because we're never going to use this in real life. I'm never going to need to solve equations like this. I'm never going to need to apply circle theorems like this, any of those concepts and what I would say to them. Early in my career, I was teaching performing arts, art and music students and I would say, if you're learning to play an instrument, you practice using scales. Do you perform scales? No. If you are a professional footballer, do they train every day by simply playing football matches? No, they do all sorts of different little drills and exercises. Ballet, similar concept. The work that you're doing at a ballet bar isn't what you're necessarily going to then go on to do on stage, but you are learning the skills, the techniques and the formative ingredients of what it is that you're going to do. The things that we do to practice something aren't necessarily the things that we do when we are then doing it. It's the same with GCSE maths. The reason why it's mandatory to my mind that you have to study GCSE maths in this country is because it is teaching you critical thinking and problem solving skills. The ability to look at a problem and then pull from somewhere else in your mind, oh, I need to apply that technique and resolve that problem. You're not going to need necessarily to solve an equation in your life, but you're going to need to be able to do that, to see something and figure out what you already know and how you can apply to that. It is training for your brain. And every instance of ChatGPT that we are using for things we are perfectly capable of doing is undoing all of that training. It is making us as a species dumber at what I would consider an alarming rate. I am deeply disturbed by this and I am horrified by the number of people who don't seem to have any concern for their own mental welfare and are gladly signing it away at the altar of split second convenience. And to a certain extent, it's become nonconformation, consensual. I am constantly bombarded by AI overviews whenever I Google something. Because before you ask ChatGPT, remember Google. Remember Google this thing that you can do. And now I see these AI overviews which let me tell you, are utterly false just as often as they are correct. Because we used to have patience. I remember having to go through Google results to find the thing that you were looking for. I don't need it to be the instant first thing. I am capable of flicking through a few Imagine explaining this to like the Victorians. Imagine explaining this to people in the late late 20th century. Even that, like, oh, scrolling to the bottom of a page of Google search results. Hours of my life I'm never getting back. All of this to say I am philosophically opposed to the widespread availability of AI tools such as these. There are instances where I don't oppose it. There are instances where it can do a lot of very positive things. It ought to be retained for those professional uses. It ought not to be so widely available. There ought to be restrictions on AI. There ought to be considerably firmer legislation in and for the benefit of this conversation, I think there ought to be mandatory disclosure about the utilization of AI. I think we as an audience, whether that's the audience to a company or the audience to a theatrical production, ought to be told when AI has been used in the development or creation of anything. Meanwhile, let's talk about how AI is actually arriving in the theater industry, both on stage and. So over the last few weeks, the major frontier on which people have been noticing AI in the theater is via generative AI images appearing on stage, appearing either in props, appearing in video backgrounds, appearing as part of the set design. There have been programs featuring AI generated costume designs, begging the question, to what extent has a costume designer actually come up with this by themselves? Are we seeing an AI designed costume on that stage? It built by real people, but who came up with the idea? And to be completely transparent of this, some of the productions accused of using AI in their onstage imagery recently have been the UK premiere of Something Rotten, currently playing in Manchester, thespians from Mischief Theatre, currently touring around the UK after debuting in Colchester, and the Jonathan Larson Project at Southwark Playhouse. Those, at least, are some that have come to the forefront of the conversation. I dare say there may be others. And in fact, last year in September, I traveled to Manchester, the same theatre in Manchester, to see 13 going on 30 the musical. And I remarked at the time that there was a lot of very evident AI in the video design because they were showing younger versions of the characters on stage who looked nothing like them. AI has adapted and evolved significantly in the few months that have passed between now and then, and it was way more primitive at that time, so it was more recognizable. And I get that it can seem like a really appealing tool when you want to show images of a younger people. I was actually at a show this evening that had childhood photos of all of its cast members, but actual photos taken from their childhood, which is something that you occasionally see in theater and on screen. But the value of being able to do that becomes null and void if it looks distractingly bad. If from one image to the next, if you're seeing a whole slideshow, these don't look like the same children. And at one point it looks eerily like this person, and at another it looks nothing like them. This is what audience members have mostly been describing in response to seeing generative AI images on stage is this feeling of being pulled out of the storytelling. And you know, there are some who are disappointed on moral grounds. Others simply say that it's distracting and confusing and in thespians and something rotten alike, it's a very similar concept. They're actually very similar narratives. And what we're seeing with these is the renderings of actors, faces in a period style, and their likenesses have been recreated as paintings of the time with different expressions. And this used to be something that you could do. I remember when you could do this on like Office, like early 2000s Microsoft Office, and you could add a filter to an image and it's like, oh, make me look like a mosaic. Make me look like an old timey painting. And so I'm seeing these images and a part of my brain for a split second doesn't necessarily 100% know that they're AI and so I am reluctant to make the accusation. It's that little bit less obvious than it was this time last year. But there remain, for the most part, little telltale signs and indications that that is exactly what it is. And, you know, it's not something that a set designer, a prop designer couldn't realize if they wanted to. It's just a hell of a lot easier to get AI to do it. Unfortunately, in many of these productions, specifically something rotten Jonathan Larson Project and Thespians, it does somewhat fly in the face of a lot of the themes being articulated in the show. And like the honesty of making genuine, challenging art, art which arises from a place of creative truth. And to see this work on stage while they're trying to tell us this particular story and realize that theme, it does sort of undermine the whole thing to some extent. Meanwhile, these professional productions are not the only ones who are noticing the opportunities when it comes to AI. I cannot tell you how many posters I have seen at at professional regional theaters, which is so disappointing, but also for amateur dramatic productions, so many utilizing really obvious generative AI and often it's in the title treatment. There is still a look to these AI posters, there is an aesthetic to them. And so A, they're all starting to look completely the same, but B, I find it embarrassing every time I see an AI poster, I'm flicking through, through the guide to the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which is meant to be this glorious place of overwhelming creativity and admittedly small budgets. That's why it's the fringe. But the number of AI posters that I'm seeing this year in comparison to last year, I mean, it's growing exponentially. And I'm so disappointed in the theater makers and the performers, the amateur companies who are meant to be the most, most innovative and the most inspired, and their inability to see beyond the attractive possibility of a quickly generated poster. And someone in the comments of another video that I shared here made a really compelling point, which is, if we understand by looking at this poster that you are that comfortable generating that using AI if this is a fringe show, why am I not supposed to believe that you've utilized AI tools in the writing of this production? And make no mistake, that is something that is happening at certain levels. Here's one. On occasion, people email me and reach out about musicals they've written. Will I listen? And someone a little while ago sent me a fully written musical created single handed, which is quite a rare thing. And it transpires that they simply wrote the lyrics themselves and AI generated an entire composed score with orchestrations, and they composed none of this. They simply put words into generative AI software and it churned out an entire musical theater score. And make no mistake, this is not a good thing. Not only are these increasingly generic sounding, but they aren't the work of actual human beings. And at their root is inherent plagiarism. Because how do we think AI software learned all of these styles and all of these abilities in the first place? If you tell AI make this sound like contemporary musical theater? They've listened to however many hours of Pasek and Paul scores, as many as the rest of us, I'm sure, in order to create that. And they are basically plagiarizing the their work. And that is my concern. That is my concern with the composer who emailed me about having written a musical theater score, except for the fact that they hadn't and weren't even a composer in the first place. They were simply Somebody who could type into software. And so now that's what I think about every time I see an AI poster. A brilliant political activist I follow on social media shared the other day, I'm not coming to your event if the poster's AI. If you don't care about your event enough to make a real poster, why should I care enough to attend? More to the point, I never think it looks good. I always think it looks embarrassing. And I think about, you know, if it's an amateur company, who is the person who volunteered to design the poster for the last production? And what was the conversation this time around like? Don't worry, Denise, we don't need you anymore because we can get this software to do it. And in professional productions, at professional theaters, those are individuals who are losing work, probably freelance individuals who are losing out on their livelihood as a result of AI possibilities. Which is why it alarms me and surprises me so much that designers in these professional productions are so willing to. Willing to create clearly AI graphics on stage and further the arrival of AI into theatrical productions without necessarily realizing that what they're doing is painting the road markings for the path to their own unemployment. They are illustrating to the producers, to the powers that be, to the people who hold the purse strings and figure out how to make productions more financially viable in economically challenging times. By the way, this is one of the ways in which you can begin to make my job a little bit obsolete for a human being. But I'm getting somewhat ahead of myself because there's a whole conversation coming about the dangerous implications of AI being used on stage, which I've kind of already started talking about. And by the way, social media people, don't think I haven't noticed you either. There are official show accounts who are often taken to task in their own comments section for using AI generated graphics in their posts. And there was this entire period when there were a bunch of social media trends for grid posts that relied on people using AI graphics. Remember when everyone was seeing what they would look like as like a Ken or a bot Barbie doll inside of a box, because that was desperately necessary for some reason, much of which we later found out, was tantamount to data farming. But I can't bring myself to feel sorry for anybody who fell for it. And what I'm really talking about here isn't even the show social media accounts. It's social media content creators in the theater sphere who are using AI graphics needlessly. Utterly needlessly. There are a couple of people I'm just about not going to call out by name, but there are individuals consistently using AI generated thumbnails for their video content. There are using AI graphics for titles within reels that they make for no reason whatsoever. It's utterly unnecessary. There are individuals talking about the theater industry and with these little talking head videos that last for 30 seconds that barely make sense because they're utterly out of context conversations. And they will be peppered with little AI generated images. In case we don't know what a rehearsal room looks like or what somebody standing on stage and singing looks like. Has to be an AI generated im. And I am just about willing to not start a fight in all of these comments sections. But on the off chance that any of those individuals are hearing what I'm saying right now, the days of my patience with this are numbered. So the two options available to you. Stop doing that forever or prepare to hear about it frequently from me. Leading us perfectly into the final part of this conversation, what actually are the dangerous implications of AI in theatre? So when we talk about the problems of AI arriving in artistic industries and there was a quote from hacks that Gene Smart's character said saying, why are we trying to replace or speed up or make more efficient the artistic process? That's a thing we're actually good at. We know how to do that. There are so many parts of the world where AI could be more useful. I mean medical research, there are so many areas that we could utilize this. This is not one where we have ever needed artificial intelligence support. It's never been necessary. Why is it even here in the first place? But the issue that people are usually quick to highlight is unemployment. The loss of jobs as a result of AI making them obsolete. And props designers and set designers and costume designers, I do think they have something to fear here. If there is any kind of a precedent set for AI being able to generate versions of their work, certainly I think, think there will be a reduction in opportunity. And I'm not wholly against, to be clear here, the use of AI tools in design, the use of AI tools in photography. I understand that that is a part of the modern process and I think that's fine. What we need to push back against is the possibility of entire individuals losing their jobs as a result of AI's arrival. That is why I don't understand, I really don't understand why these designers would illuminate the pathway to their own obsoletion. I get it. And when I think about AI artwork on stage, on these props, on these posters, these banners, whatever they may be in this video design. It makes me feel frustrated. It also makes me feel scared. I will explain why the frustration is because it is making me suspicious of any artwork that I see on stage. There was a giant statue in the production of Sweeney Todd I saw at the Birmingham Rep the other day. I have no reason to be believe that the design for this was AI generated. But I'm counting the fingers on the statue and trying to figure out if that looks a bit weird or if there's like six fingers on one hand and five on the other. Are the proportions of the thing a little bit off? I have become so distrustful of artwork that I see on stage now. And it's because I feel like I'm being set up to be the fool who is going to praise someone's artistic contributions to a production only to later find out out that it was a couple pushes of a button and not actual innovative creative work. I'm somebody who likes to sit here and spend an hour plus telling you about a production and telling you the names of the individuals who brought that about. How frustrating to find out that some of their work was actually AI generated and as such inherently on some level plagiarized from their peers as their work will go on to be if they co sign sign this. I am someone who celebrates work, vision, artistry, creativity and craft, not this. And until very recently in the entertainment world, we were really big on the whole copyright conversation. And now our fascination with AI seems to have entirely curtailed and bypassed any concerns that we have about that. Because inherently so much copyright infringement is happening, it's just not black and white or obvious enough for us to make a claim about it. It worth pointing out as well, this is only really a commentary on where AI is right now. I mentioned that I was frustrated. I also said that I was scared. The scared is because I realize I can just about tell AI now, like I said last September, very obvious. It's still pretty clear when you're looking at an AI generated image because they continue to have a certain look, a certain aesthetic. But I'm beginning to see stuff on social media. I mean, I'm seeing a lot of people just distrusting everything. They see a video that clearly shows something political happening in a bad light and people are now using the justification. Well, I don't believe this. It's probably AI even though it might have been something that happened 10 years ago. This video resurfaced recently, footage of September 11th in New York City and the Twin Towers. And people were commenting Saying, this looks so unrealistic. It must be AI we are in real time losing our ability to tell the difference. Difference. And I'm less worried about AI in theater right now as I am about AI in theater next year and how many more examples there could potentially be that we simply can't recognize because it is getting so much more sophisticated so quickly. I remember when AI couldn't generate video particularly well, and now it can. And so to circle back to a point I made right at the very beginning of this, when people are giving these interviews and saying, do you know what? I think theatre is going to be okay. I think we're really going to need theater because we're going to crave that human connection. Connection. They're right. They are not wrong when they say this. However, this really only applies to the people who find themselves working on stage. There are multiple other roles that I fear AI will develop ways to render obsolete. How long until composers begin simply generating orchestrations rather than working with an orchestrator and paying an individual? If it's that much cheaper, if the budget isn't there, why not simply, you know, click a button and see what that can do? It's artwork now, but I have deep concerns about what it's going to be tomorrow. And regardless, let's circle back to all of the major implications of AI use at all in the first place and acknowledge that even if people are craving human connection, and you think we're still going to be able to make theater on stage because people are really going to need that. There is no theater on a dying planet. There is no honest, genuine theater in a fascist state. Only compliance. The solution is not, let me tell you, to weather the storm and continue being the theater industry and wait for everybody to need us in the growing AI apocalypse. The solution is, in fact, to oppose this at every level. To oppose the rise of AI, to oppose the rise of fascism simultaneously. I know it seems like I'm having two different conversations in this, a technological one and a political one, but they are connected. They are inherently connected. Connected. Just look at the individuals who are pushing these AI platforms at every opportunity. And by the way, there was a time when if you made a successful YouTube video, you might get an email from one of the sort of generic, prolific YouTube sponsors. It might be BetterHelp. It might be Skillshare. It might be the brand formerly known as Athletic Greens. It might be NordVPN. I don't get any of those emails anymore. What I get on a near daily basis are new, new AI tools every single day, often offering large amounts of money for me to simply try and push these AI tools at you. These AI programs for doing various different things, but always AI driven. And those emails that I'm getting are probably distributed by AI. It's probably not even a human being who has found my email address. It's probably an AI search through the Internet, finding me on a certain list or whatever, whatever, and then sending that my way, needless to say. And the robots can probably hear me right now and are already plotting my eventual robot Y demise. But I am never going to sit here and plug an AI platform. I am never going to push that on you or tell you that it's a good idea for all of the reasons that I've been articulating. Meanwhile, you start to understand why, even though it's just a poster on stage, it's just a few seconds of video design design, it actually is that big a deal. Even if it seems like it's not because of the impact, because of the implications, because of what it's trying to teach audiences, because of the precedent that it may set, because of the damn principle of the thing. I am wholeheartedly opposed to the implementation of AI in the arts generally, but particularly in the theatrical space. It is so utterly incongruous with everything thing that we cherish about theater and what it actually is. It is not this corner cutting capitalist machine to which you are attempting to reduce it either willfully or ignorantly. Go watch your own show and relearn that lesson. In the meantime, perhaps I have persuaded some of you of the dangerous realities of fully embracing AI into your lives. And though I don't necessarily feel particularly empowered or optimistic about it, I do think that moving forwards, people need to continue to challenge productions. I am going to let you know in every review I share if I have perceived AI within the production. I do think that it ought to be mandatory to disclose AI use. I think globally there ought to be massive restrictions on it. Until that happens though, we're going to continue seeing a lot of samey looking 3D font and weirdly not quite right faces for now for fear of my head exploding before you. All that is everything that I have to say about AI in the theater. I hope that this is not something I have to talk about again in a major way way, but it's also not something that is, you know, on the road towards positive resolution. I would love to hear your thoughts about this in the comments section down below. If there are any other troubling examples of this that I have missed or any areas where you have noticed it being used in other productions in the UK or around the world. Please share those in the comments. And if you would like to hear my thoughts on other generally more positive parts of the theatre industry, as well as all of my theater review use, then you can find Those here on YouTube or over on podcast platforms. Make sure to subscribe. Follow me wherever you need to. And as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.