Making audiences giggle is huge enterprise, and over the previous decade the stand-up comedy market within the US has nearly tripled, exterior by way of the mixed worth of tickets offered. That’s based on knowledge from commerce publication Pollstar, which displays the stay efficiency sector. It says US comedy ticket gross sales hit $900m (£700m) in 2023, up from $371m in 2012.
In the meantime, a separate examine final month stated that stay comedy was now price greater than £1bn, exterior a 12 months to the UK economic system. This determine contains not simply ticket gross sales, but additionally the revenues of comedy venues and festivals, and the optimistic influence on the broader native economies.
US comic Viv Ford can also be acting at this month’s Edinburgh Pageant Fringe.
Her present known as “No Children On The Blockchain”, and particulars her time dwelling with “14 tech-loving crypto [currency] bros in San Francisco”.
Although she wrote the present herself, she explains she examined her materials on ChatGPT.
“I am going to say, ‘hey, is that this joke humorous?’. And if it says ‘it’s humorous’, genuinely, it doesn’t land with an viewers,” says Viv. “But when it says a joke ‘is offensive’ it does so nicely.
“And typically ChatGPT will say ‘the joke is ok, however might use some work’, through which case I toss it away and begin once more.”
Viv is aware of that a lot of folks gained’t be so embracing of AI within the arts. It’s a view she used to take till she lived in San Francisco, the place so many tech companies are primarily based.
“I am so conscious that the one motive I feel this manner is due to my four-year indoctrination within the faculty of San Francisco,” she says. “I realised AI might be your weapon, identical to Google might be your weapon. If you understand how to make use of AI appropriately, you might be unstoppable.”