AI and the Arts: Critical Insights from Stand-Up Comedy and Creative Practic

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Abstract

This scholar-artist research explores how AI shapes creative expression. Focusing on stand-up comedy, we examine how comedians resist, embrace, and satirize AI in their work. The project will produce scholarly and artistic artifacts that inform debates about the future of creativity, technologists and policymakers’ ethical responsibilities, and AI in K–12 tech and arts education.

This study explores how Chicago stand-up comedians understand, utilize, resist, and satirize AI. We examine how comedians interpret AI’s presence in their industry and integrate/resist AI in joke writing, performance, and commentary. The project will surface artists’ perspectives on the ethical and creative implications of AI, with an eye toward conversations about AI, creativity, and education.

Debates on AI’s future need diverse voices (Vakil, 2018). While emerging work explores how youth, educators, and workers understand AI ethics, artists receive little attention. Stand-up is viewed as a personal art form, sheltered from technological incursions seen in other creative fields. Yet AI has begun to shape comedy. By examining how comedians engage AI, we underscore the critical importance of incorporating artists’ voices into AI ethics. Our analysis uses sociocultural theories of learning (Nasir et al., 2020; Holland, 2001), scholarship on AI ethics (Benjamin, 2019; Fouche, 2006; Greene et al., 2019; Birhane, 2021), and research on creativity and cognition (Runco & Chanbd, 1995; Rubin, 2023).

We employ a qualitative design combining cognitive ethnography (CE) and content analysis (CA). CE offers a method for examining how individuals make sense of phenomena in natural settings (Hutchins, 1995). We are conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews on how comics discuss and integrate AI into their creative processes. And, we are conducting a systematic CA (Krippendorff, 2018) of twelve stand-up specials selected for their engagement with technology and AI.
For recruitment, a Chicago comic and team member, used Instagram stories to gather reflections on AI. This yielded 24 respondents, with whom we are conducting interviews. Our data includes fieldnotes, and transcriptions of specials, which feature a racially diverse set of performers. These methods will connect what comedians believe and with broader representations of AI in stand-up.

Preliminary results suggest comics critique AI evangelists who argue its necessity and inevitably. Comics emphasize negative implications of AI: environment, corporate power, and existential threats. Criticism takes a humanist perspective. One comic said AI “sucks your soul away.” Another responded, “it’s human to have writer’s block…art takes time.” Others, however, expressed curiosity, viewing AI as an opportunity to enhance their craft. Respondents say AI helps them “grasp concepts of comedy” and “learn more about their style.” Some suggest AI writes good jokes: “ChatGPT is really good at writing roasts.”

This study contributes to conversations about AI and creativity. Centering artists, we broaden AI ethics scholarship beyond classrooms and workplaces. Comedians offer unique perspectives on the sociotechnical systems shaping our cultural landscape, revealing AI as both a tool and target of critique. Our findings have implications for K–12 tech and arts education, policy on AI and creativity, and scholarly understandings of how diverse communities redefine the ethical horizons of technology.

Authors

• Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University

• William Paik, Northwestern University

• Samir Abdul, Independent Scholar

• Mike Knight, Independent Scholar