Machines can't write scenes like Larry shouting at Siri
Curb your enthusiasm for AI-generated comedy
Larry definitely not asking Siri about bundt cake. Curb Your Enthusiasm S12, E01.
Production of the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm had to navigate around the strike by the Writer’s Guild of America, which occurred from last May through September. Larry David supported the strikers despite his own show being among those halted, and he sent writers walking the picket line some Yeastie Boys Bagels.
The strike was a fierce and necessary battle waged by screenwriters—to protect their careers against their livelihoods being side-stepped by generative AI being used to write scripts, or a reason for the studios to offer lower wages. The gravity of the situation was emphasized by SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher:
"If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble, we are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines"
But if the studios had won—with generative AI by their sides—who would have the last laugh? Not the audience, according to a Google DeepMind study led by research scientist Piotr Mirowski, who himself is a moonlighting improv comedian.
Mirowski’s project invited 20 professional comedians to use ChatGPT or Google Gemini to produce material they would feel comfortable performing as their own. The results bombed. So far, artificial intelligence falls flat at the biting, off-colour, and hyper-referential commentary that makes shows like Curb resonate with viewers.
“The comedians described the jokes as bland, generic and boring, another likened it to ‘cruise ship comedy material from the 1950s, but a bit less racist.’”
What makes comedy by humans more biting and blithe than bits and bobs of human experience scraped from the internet? Comedy is a contact sport—its value lies in the immediate and intimate awareness of society’s experience, nuance, contradiction and idiosyncrasy. Comedy is meant to provoke and to surprise, while AI is so far left struggling to mimic human experience to please a wide audience.
In the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, there’s a visceral scene we can all relate to, when Larry is in his car asking Siri directions to Wolfsglen Restaurant. While the contrite and melodic voice veers further off the mark while answering, our hero gets enraged, shouting a stream of expletives at his phone—which Siri contorts into defining a bundt cake. Could this exchange have been generated by AI? No, because the technology can’t capture the intangible and heartfelt relatability of this essentially human experience. Here’s another question! Why would we want it to?
If the essence of comedy involves a feedback loop between humourist and humanity, what is gained by taking the comedian’s voice out of the equation?