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Ozempic. Religion. Cheating. “We love easy answers. We love shortcuts,” Garrett Millerick says in his latest hour, which turns out to be his most audacious Fringe show yet.
That’s because he built an AI replica of himself, which he refers to as G Dog, developing its learning language model specifically on everything Millerick has ever said onstage, on the radio or TV, on podcasts, anywhere. He spoke to it for months so it could talk. And he created an animated avatar to deliver jokes. He even went so far as to create a fake clip of himself performing AI-generated stand-up on Live at the Apollo, since he’ll never get to do it for real, thanks to the BBC cancelling the series. As part of the show, he’s also turned it into an app so audience members can deliver prompts to his AI version during the show.
Sure there’s the basic question: Can the artificially computerized version of Millerick be as funny as the real thing?
But then there’s the deeper moral, ethical, existential questions. This experiment not only makes whatever you think of “AI” to be more horrifying than what you may have thought of it before. It’s also never going to produce the same feelings in his human brain and body that actual stand-up to a live audience provides to him. AI cannot and will not replace live entertainment.
That we’ve already allowed all of the previous forms of digital interaction and “intelligence” to invade our lives should’ve proved warning enough of what can happen to society and our own individual mental health if we let digital interactions replace real-life ones.
Laugh at this while it’s still funny.
Garrett Millerick: We Tried it Your Way plays Baby Grand at Pleasance Courtyard during the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe.
