Piotr Mirowski on the promise and perils of AI in theatre

Piotr Mirowski, a Poland-born computer scientist and actor, is bringing his AI-and-performance project to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this month. Speaking to Reuters from London ahead of his show, “Improbotics Presents: Artificial Reality,” Mirowski describes years of experimenting with how performers, audiences and language models can interact. Now a visiting researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London, he said he began after noticing that language models can generate the “first thing” without hesitation—something adult actors often struggle to do. The production pairs a robot character with a human cast in a tech satire, reflecting his view that AI’s novelty is fading while human connection still draws audiences.