‘Artificial Flavors’ Review: Blame ChatGPT for This Musical

Artificial intelligence can paint meddlesome monkeys, speak in the basso profundo of James Earl Jones and play a tune to suit a hall of mirrors. But it can’t write a musical that doesn’t feel canned (at least, not yet). That’s the argument put forward by “Artificial Flavors,” a live demonstration of A.I.’s creative capabilities — and tedious limitations — at 59E59 Theaters.

The writer and director Steve Cosson, the artistic director of the restlessly curious company the Civilians, here assumes the role of a somewhat befuddled narrator, explaining that this project was born from his late-night tinkering with programs like ChatGPT. Cosson, who says he is not a performer, at times doesn’t seem to know where to stand or what to say next. Whether or not it’s an act (and I suspect that it is), Cosson’s apparent insecurity provides a stark contrast to the technology he is investigating.

Cosson solicits Mad Libs-style audience input to show that generative A.I. merely needs prompting and a few seconds to spit out an unconvincing Picasso or write vaguely in the voice of Stephen King, examples projected on a screen. Six actors then step in to perform A.I.-generated skits, including a scene between socialist comrades quibbling over a Birkin bag on the night I attended. Cosson promises that each performance of “Artificial Flavors” will culminate in a brand-new musical, with text written by ChatGPT and melodies composed on the spot by the Civilians and the onstage music director Dan Lipton.

The problem is that every example of A.I.-generated content proceeding it portends how bad that musical will be. That seems to be Cosson’s point, though it becomes tiresome as his experiment balloons to 90 minutes. What scant humor A.I. produces here is inadvertent and its metaphors are clichéd. (“We’re more than gears, circuits and wires,” one early sample lyric goes, “We are the spark igniting untamed fires.”)

There is ingenuity in the varying parameters for a musical that Cosson feeds into ChatGPT, including conflict, setting and structure (for example, a pie-eating contest at a beachside resort). But by Cosson’s design, A.I. is squarely to blame for the resulting artistic failure. The cast does impressive impromptu work, singing on the fly and reading live text from hand-held tablets. Michael Castillejos and Trey Lyford add lo-fi percussion to Lipton’s electronic keyboard, while Heath Saunders appears to lead the ensemble’s unpolished vocals. But the songs and dialogue, though generated anew each night, are no doubt consistently inane.

Theater artists are wrestling, like many others, with the rapidly expanding power of A.I. and its implications on the form. In “Prometheus Firebringer” earlier this fall, the creator Annie Dorsen delivered an incisive lecture about human obedience to technology alongside a haunting but prosaic illustration of its current capacities. Cosson, who says that A.I. and theater are both “in the business of making fake life,” delivers something closer to A.I. 101 before reveling at how inept it is at doing his job.

He may be tipping the scale with this anodyne, presentational staging (the office set, reminiscent of the Sims, is by the studio casaboyce) and by using the technology only to generate text, when it’s also capable of more complex musical compositions and voice imitation. Still, his point stands: A.I. is proficient at producing “fake life,” but without an artist’s subjectivity or point of view. Unfortunately for the audience, witnessing the boundaries of innovation comes with few rewards.

Artificial Flavors
Through Nov. 19 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.