For the first time since 1947, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as we know it is not going ahead. But there are years of previous programmes stored in the digital vaults. The Bot, an artificial neural network, goes to work on these data, compiling the world’s first AI-generated event blurbs for a virtual arts festival of comedy, plays, musicals, and cabaret… will you lend a hand in the effort?

The aim of ImprovBot is to explore the junction of human creativity and comedy, and to see how this is affected when an Artificial Intelligence enters into the mix. From 7th to 31st August 2020, The Bot will crank out a new show blurb, on the hour, every hour, generated by using a recurrent neural network on 2,098,140 words of Fringe show listings (2011-2019). Feel free to respond, remix, critique, or sigh. We look forward to your interactions with ImprovBot!